Persistent Slabs
- Hochgebirge
- Waldgrenze
- Unterhalb der Waldgrenze
- Wahrscheinlichkeit
- Likely
- Größe
- 4
The buried Persistent Weak Layer that formed in Jan/Feb still concerns me. While riding snowbikes on Saturday, my partners and I were able to get some cracking and small pockets to release as a slab on the old weak sugary snow. These were quite small pockets less than 10 feet wide but still showed failure on the loose sugary snow. Here's the deal. As time goes on, the snowpack will become more stable and at some point the faceted snow may not be a concern anymore. It is getting more unlikely that people will trigger an avalanche. But a buried loose sugary layer of snow is very unpredictable and is very difficult to determine when it will no longer fail and produce avalanches. The safe bet is to continue to hold off getting onto the big steep more northerly facing slopes until more stabilization has happened.