Northwest Mountains

Avalanche hazards are isolated with generally safe conditions.  There is a small chance you find a reactive hard slab in extreme terrain on previously drifted slopes.  This past weekend's wind-loading event increased cornice sizes with several failing a few days ago resulting in large avalanches.  Although cornices are unlikely to fail naturally, give cornices a healthy margin while traveling above them.  The best snow and riding conditions can be found in wind-protected areas at lower elevations.

Northwest Mountains:  You could encounter several unlikely avalanche problems.  In isolated places, you could find an old drift that remains reactive to the weight of a person or snowmobile.  Well-drifted terrain features that are unsupported from below like rocky or cliffy areas or extreme terrain are examples of places where this unlikely event could occur.  Cornices underwent a significant growth period last weekend.  This growth led to several cornice failures that released large slab avalanches upon impact (see the image gallery below).  Natural cornice fall is unlikely, but cornices may still be sensitive to the additional weight of a person walking too close; simply stay well back from large cornices to reduce the risk.  Finally, mild temperatures and some sunshine may wet sunny slopes but warming factors will likely be offset by strong southwest winds.  A few wind-protected sunny slopes may become wet enough for small Wet Loose avalanche activity, but this would be the exception, not the norm given the cooling effect of the wind.

Southeast Mountains:  The intense wind-loading period this past weekend did not produce any documented Persistent Slab avalanches in the Southeast Mountains, however just over the crest of the Elk Mountains, near the Aspen valley ski areas, there was a rash of large to very large avalanches.  It appears the snowpack on the Crested Butte side of the Elk Mountains was better suited to tolerate the loading event but avalanche activity on the Aspen side suggests thoughtful decision-making is wise.  Triggering an avalanche that breaks in older weak layers remains possible, particularly in terrain with highly variable snow depths due to rockiness or slopes that received a tremendous amount of wind-loading this past weekend.  The most dangerous slopes are previously drifted, leeward slopes at upper elevations.  Sheltered below treeline slopes offer a lower likelihood of avalanche but slabs and weak layers exist here as well.  This observation from below treeline in lower Brush Creek produced propagating long column test results on basal weak layers.  The current Persistent Slab problem is trending towards a lower-likelihood yet high-consequence event.