Togwotee Pass

Winds over the past week have blown the recent snowfall into slabs and drifts in upper elevation and alpine terrain. Avoid steep slopes where you find wind-drifted or pillowed snow, and areas where the wind has drifted new snowfall onto crusts. Triggering an avalanche on weak layers buried 3+ feet deep remains a possibility on very steep, rocky, wind-affected slopes at middle and upper elevations.

State of the Snowpack

The Togwotee snowpack is the shallowest and weakest, especially around the Grouse and Brooks areas. As is not uncommon in this area, there is plenty of weak, faceted snow—what's lacking is a slab of cohesive snow atop it in many spots. Currently, unstable slopes are largely limited to where recent and/or past wind events have created dense or stiff snow in the upper pack. The incoming storm tomorrow will favor the Tetons and Togwotee, so expect to see changing conditions and higher wind speeds.

The Greys River zone is the unpredictable one in the middle. There is a great deal of variability across this zone, but it all falls somewhere between the two scenarios described above. The thin, windswept snowpack of the Salts has characteristics of Togwotee, where wind slabs sitting atop weak, faceted snow are the main concern. The Wyoming and Snake River areas have a bit deeper snowpack, with early-season weak layers buried 2-4 feet deep. In the Salt Range, the faceted snow near the ground seems especially pronounced

The deepest snowpack exists in the Tetons*. I put an asterisk here because the west and east side of the range have entirely different snowpacks, and the west side remains far thinner with a more obvious weak layer development that will persist. Overall, a sandwich of persistent weak layers remains highlighted on the southern half of the compass in the middle and upper elevations. My primary concern is a thicker layer of facets exhibiting a more widespread pattern which was buried in late January. These layers are buried 3+ feet deep due to the nature of the larger storm that buried them. This, to me, reads that triggering an avalanche on them may be more difficult, but likely larger and very consequential. This layer is worth looking for in pits and assessing carefully with recent and changing weather on the way. Avoiding thinner "trigger points" is the name of the game—these are more likely to be found in very steep, rocky, alpine terrain that is prevalent on the west side, but less so on the east.

So there you have it— familiarize yourself with the snowpack in areas you frequent, keep your head on a swivel with incoming weather, know the people you like to get out with and how well you all communicate—and choose terrain that fits your assessment of all of the above.