Soldier & Wood River Valley Mtns

Generally safe avalanche conditions exist. Loose snow avalanches or sluffs may be possible in very steep terrain. The minor storm arriving this afternoon could form thin wind slabs in exposed terrain.

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The snowpack throughout the forecast area is generally stable, and there are no clearly defined avalanche problems. So is there anything you should watch out for? Yes—rare is the day when you can close your avalanche eyeballs. On some very steep, shady slopes, sluffs of the sugary surface snow (facet-lanches) are possible. As new snow begins to accumulate later today, these slopes could become even more "sluffy". By tomorrow morning, the few inches of forecasted snowfall may have been blown into some thin, fresh wind slabs. 

STATE OF THE SNOWPACKThe prolonged dry weather since Thanksgiving has left us with a widespread weak, faceted snowpack. On most slopes that haven't been cooked by the sun, the top 8 to 12 inches of the snowpack has turned sugary and cohesionless. Yesterday in Baker Creek, I found this surface snow to be about as weak as it gets. A second weak layer exists on some upper elevation, northerly-facing slopes where snow from October storms lingered into November. In these areas, a layer of depth hoar (well-developed faceted snow) can be found at the base of the snowpack. This layer seems more prevalent in the northern half of the forecast area, and examples can be seen in videos from the White Clouds and from Frenchman's Creek near the Salmon Headwaters, as well as in this photo from Banner Summit.

Okay, what about sunny slopes? These lack the widespread facet layers but have been thrashed by the sunshine and warm temperatures over the past few weeks. They generally consist of crusts and some have melted out completely.

This is all well and good, but we all know that a weak layer is only one of the necessary ingredients for avalanches. The other component—a slab—has been the missing piece of the puzzle. While the shifting weather pattern may open the door to forming a slab atop these weak layers, the forecasted snowfall over the coming week is not looking as promising as it once did. As usual in the avalanche business, only time will tell.

You can read a more in-depth summary of the snowpack in our latest Conditions Blog post.

SO NOW WHAT?It's a good time to start shifting your mindset. We've had an uncharacteristically stable start to the winter, and backcountry sliders and riders have been more limited by snow coverage than snow stability. With the door now open to possible loading of these weak layers, we may be headed for the more usual pattern of an unstable early season snowpack.