Challenging travel on firm and icy surfaces may be a greater hazard than avalanches. It may be possible to trigger a small pocket of wind drifted snow at middle elevations. Use caution in steep terrain, where falls are dangerous on a refrozen snowpack.
You may be able to find thin, isolated pockets of wind slab today but should be sufficiently isolated in distribution to be easily avoided. Evidence of this avalanche problem may be hard to find, however worthy of mentioning due to the fact that a small seemingly inconsequential avalanche could trip you up and result in a high consequence sliding fall.
Snowpack Reset: The 8 inches of snow that fell early yesterday has been saturated with rain and is now mostly or entirely refrozen solid. When making snowpack observations in the next few days, dig down and explore the depth of the frozen snow. If the frozen layer is sufficiently thick, consider this a hard reset for the snowpack and any layers within.
New Wind Slabs: Today’s wind slab avalanche problem is based entirely on the snow which accumulated in the evening and overnight once temperatures dropped: around 1 inch. One inch doesn’t give the wind much raw material to work with so these new slabs will be thin, and may be hard to find - if they exist at all. If you are brave enough to be on skis today, you may be drawn to the smooth white snow so be sure to factor in the consequences of a fall knowing an icy bed surface lurks below.
Long Sliding Falls: Traveling in steep avalanche terrain today will require full mountaineering equipment including stiff boots, crampons, and an ice ax. Long sliding falls are dangerous, injuring or killing more people than avalanches in our forecast area.
