Gunnison

Small and predictable wet instabilities will develop on steep, sunbaked slopes.  Mind your terrain consequences if you're riding hot and sluffy powder or come across freshly drifted snow.  There's more potential for larger surprises on the northern half of the compass, where there is a lower-likelihood threat of triggering a slab avalanche that breaks up to a few feet thick on weak layers buried earlier this month.   Wind exposed slopes with shallow and variable snow depths near and above treeline warrant the most caution.   

With the sun coming out in full force today, we will see the fresh snow start to sluff naturally in sunbaked terrain that has about 6" or more of soft, unconsolidated snow over older crusts.  That setup is most common at higher elevations, or in snow-favored areas below treeline west and east of town.  Cooler temperatures today will help moderate activity and keep wet loose avalanches confined to just the recent snow.  A few of these slides may propagate a bit wider than a simple point release as the storm snow settles and moistens rapidly.  Expect more wet activity tomorrow with temperatures rising almost 10 degrees warmer.  If your objectives involve consequential terrain on sunny aspects, plan to be done before the snow gets sticky and starts to rollerball.    On those sunny aspects at higher elevations, you may also encounter shallow wind slabs that formed overnight from northwest winds.  Observers at Opa's Hut reported drifts up to 8" thick this morning near the hut.  

Our primary concern remains persistent slabs, not because it is the most common, but because it has the most potential to surprise you and be large enough to injure or bury you.  We've gotten bits and pieces of feedback from the problem over the past couple of weeks: that's because it only exists on some slopes.  The most common theme is previously drifted and shallow, and the slides have all been on north to east facing terrain near and above treeline.  Across our forecast area, shallow snowpacks are most common in terrain that avalanched back in February, and that terrain has produced a few large avalanches in the past few weeks.  Outside of our forecast area, there have also been a few large avalanches that failed near the ground: again, in terrain holding unusually shallow snowpacks (example).  In wind-sheltered terrain, the slow and small accumulations of snow this week appear to be playing nice with buried weak layers: we haven't seen evidence of the problem in wind protected slopes.  Our biggest concern for lingering issues is in shallow and weak snowpacks that saw more wind drifting in the past month.  This observation yesterday highlights those concerns.