Northern New Mexico

Dangerous avalanche conditions exist on many slopes throughout our range after four consecutive nights of nonrefreezing or superficial refreezing temperatures.  Wet slab avalanches will be most frequent in areas below treeline where free water has easily percolated down into the depth hoar, but this trend is also moving uphill into regions where the snowpack is deeper and the resulting avalanches would be larger.  Persistent slab avalanches also remain a concern on northerly aspects near and above treeline where the weak layers have remained colder and dryer throughout the warmup.  These avalanches would only take you hitting the right shallow spot to trigger, and you may also run into wet snow instabilities lower down on the same slopes.   

Avoid being on or near slopes greater than 30 degrees where you're finding really wet, unsupportable snow that allows you to punch in well past your boot tops or all the way to the ground.  Natural wet snow avalanches are possible and human-triggered wet snow avalanches are likely today.

Well folks, this week has given new meaning to the word "bleak" for me.  Despite it being the end of March, the mountains are starting to look more like they typically do towards the end of May or even June.  Backcountry travel has become quite challenging, with very limited snow remaining below 11,000 ft after this heater of a weak.  If you're planning to get out and make something happen, expect to deal with lots of dirt, rocks, and ice patches that become slush or standing water by mid-day.  Understand also that pretty much all of the remaining "decent" skiing and riding is situated in significant avalanche terrain, and our exceptionally weak snowpack has failed or struggled to refreeze for four nights now, drastically increasing our alert for wet slab avalanches.  I'll be sitting this day out for sure and going rock climbing or mountain biking instead because truthfully, backcountry conditions will be extremely poor as well as scary today. 

Four nights in a row of superficial and non-existent refreezes plus daily temperatures pushing into the 50s spells disaster for a snowpack that harbors widespread weak snow near the surface.  Whether it's a well-lubricated faceted crust or wet depth hoar, this isn't a snowpack worth gambling with, and destructive wet slabs will be easy to trigger or occur on their own today.Photo: Taos Avalanche Center   (3/28/2025)

When we start introducing wet slabs in a forecast, we're typically looking for multiple nights of non-refreeze or else very poor refreezing temperatures.  On Wednesday, Andy and I went out and looked at the snow after two nights like this and found that melt water was indeed doing its job and percolating deeper into the depth hoar in areas below treeline, where travel was generally punchy and unsupportable and we could kick off the entire slab above the depth hoar on small test slopes.  Near and above treeline, the melt water was pooling on buried crusts in the upper several feet of the snowpack, but still managing to push a little deeper and get down closer to the depth hoar.  As such, we spotted many natural wet snow avalanches that failed on crusts like this, and in several cases stepped down into deeper weak layers.  Now that we've had four consecutive nights with similarly poor or non-existent refreezes, I expect the chances of wet slab avalanches to be greater and in many cases moving uphill to bigger slopes with deeper snowpacks, as that melt water has had additional time to percolate further in more places.  Today, you're more likely to encounter or trigger these dangerous and destructive types of avalanches in steeper terrain, whether it starts as a smaller wet loose avalanche and steps down or triggers directly underneath you or above you. This problem is a real threat right now and I frankly wouldn't even want to be near avalanche terrain where this percolation has been happening, which in our case is a lot of different slopes save for some northerly terrain at upper elevations.  However, that terrain still bears the setup for persistent slab avalanches.

(3/26/2025)

Snow profile on a Northeast aspect near treeline.  The upper areas of the snowpack here were becoming very wet, with some water percolating further down as well.  Test results confirmed a very weak snowpack: ECTP3 on the late Feb. faceted crust/dust layer, and ECTP12 on the depth hoar.

Photo: Charlie Harrison

Oftentimes when dealing with wet snow concerns during spring and early summer conditions, we have the option to go early and travel on supportable crusts, but this isn't really the case for us at the moment.  Certainly, you'll be finding plenty of crusts out there if you're out early, but many of them will be breakable or otherwise unsupportable with such a poor refreeze last night.  You must understand that in general, it will be nearly impossible to avoid impacting our weak layers even on northerly slopes at upper elevations where the snow has stayed dryer.  Up on those slopes, it's still possible to collapse faceted crusts or depth hoar and trigger a destructive persistent slab avalanche if you were to just hit a shallow spot.  Many of those slopes are going to hold highly variable snow depths and conditions throughout: a shallower spot there, a wetter spot there -- and the take-home message for you should be similar whether you're dealing with wet snow or dry snow.  Conditions are simply too variable to have any shroud of confidence that you won't be impacting weak layers in your travels, and the better choice is to avoid avalanche terrain altogether or choose a different activity.  Unfortunately, there isn't much skiing or riding to do that fits into that box after such an incredibly hot and sunny week.  I wish the story were different, but I'm going to chalk this winter up as a growing year where I remembered how much to appreciate good conditions the few times that they came around.

Looking ahead, the hot weather backs off a bit this weekend, where we will see slightly better refreezes and more consistent winds than we've had all week.  Next week, there is a decent chance that we'll see an April snowstorm roll through by Thursday or Friday, and perhaps earlier according to some models.  This would be great if it turns out for us, not just because it would be fun to have a day or so of powder-on-crust riding conditions, but because our forests need any moisture they can get to alleviate the imminent fire season.  Fingers crossed everybody!