After a few weeks of warm, snowy, wet, and windy weather, we have built up a layered snowpack with a few crusts and softer layers within it. Yesterday's SE winds combined with plenty of snow available for transport, has created recent wind slabs in cross loaded gullies and leeward NW slopes. Avoid these wind loaded areas, where deep avalanches could be triggered within the old storm snow. With so much unconsolidated snow, this is a good time to widen your margins of safety and avoid steep slopes.
Besides the more likely surface avalanches, there remain worries deeper down into the snowpack where softer storm layers and discontinuities remain. Some deeper crusts could act as a slick bed surface and produce a much larger avalanche.
- Group management is key. Equally important to the forecast, are the people you go out with, and the way you communicate and practice risk reduction as a group throughout the day.- A week of limited observations and rapid changes has increased our uncertainty. - As a final note, loose avalanches / sluff will be a problem in steep areas, and this loose snow can easily carry you over cliffs or into a terrain trap.
