Flathead Range & Glacier NP

On isolated slopes, you can still trigger a dangerous avalanche. Your chances of that increase as you climb higher in elevation or into steeper terrain. Remain skeptical of slopes steeper than 35 degrees where there's no hard, thick crust within a few inches of the snow surface. These are mostly above about 7000 feet elevation. Adhering to safe travel protocols - one at a time, eyes on your partners, away from terrain traps, always with rescue gear - can give you a margin for mistakes.

The dominant feature in the snowpack across the region remains a hard crust deposited by a warm, wet storm on Jan. 13. It's bifurcated avalanche concerns into two distinct situations - where it is and where it isn't. The avalanche danger is currently LOW in both cases, though for different reasons. Future avalanche hazards will develop differently when more snow arrives. 

The where-it-is: While there are layers of weak snow below the crust, it's unlikely the weight of a person or snowmachine will collapse those layers and trigger a slide while the crust remains close to the surface. Observers have reported it at elevations up to about 6300 feet in the northern reaches of the region, and over 7000 feet in the south. As you near those limits, the crust varies in hardness with aspect (harder and slicker on windward slopes) and even becomes spotty,  as if squalls deposited rain in some spots but not others. You'll find it under 1 to 4 inches of low-density snow at mid elevations. 

The where-it-isn't: At upper elevations, where the 1/13 storm deposited only snow, there's no crust to cap underlying weak layers. Fortunately, existing weak layers and aging wind slabs are dormant except on isolated slopes. That's the tricky part. Is the slope you're staring up or down the isolated exception? You can dig on nearby slopes, and if you find sudden shears or propagation in column tests, you can conclude that you've found one of the exceptions and move on. You can reduce the risk of riding an individual slope by picking lines that avoid the spots where weak layers are usually better developed, or where your weight is most likely to affect them. Those likely trigger points include convexities (where a slope steepens abruptly ), patches where the snowpack is thinner because of wind scouring, rocky areas where facets tend to grow larger,  and the edges of wind slabs. You can also avoid all this complexity - and reduce your risk signigicantly - by sticking to slopes less than 35 degrees. 

Future avalanche hazards: The dry, cold weather is promoting faceting and the deposition of surface hoar at all elevations. This snow may form a significant weak layer once it's buried, particularly where it's sandwiched between a stiff slab and the 1/13 crust. Not much we can do about that now, except track what's happening in your go-to riding destinations.