Wind Slabs
- Alta montaña
- Límite del bosque
- Bajo el límite del bosque
- Probabilidad
- Likely
- Tamaño
- 1–2.5
It's been a windy week in Seward, but it is looking like we will finally see a break today. The snow that has been blowing around for the past week should stabilize quickly, but there is still a chance you will be able to find reactive wind slabs today. This will be most likely at higher elevations, especially near ridgelines, convex rolls, and in steep gullies. This was the case with an avalanche incident in the Turnagain Pass area on Friday, and we expect conditions are similar in the Seward zone.
Keep all of this in mind if you are trying to access steep terrain. Take indicators like shooting cracks or collapsing as a clear sign that the snowpack is unstable where you are traveling, and consider using small terrain features as test slopes to see how these recent wind slabs are behaving before moving into bigger terrain. As always, if you are uncertain about the conditions you can avoid the problem entirely by staying out of steep terrain. With quiet weather in the forecast for the foreseeable future, we are expecting a trend of improving stability this week.
Cornices: There are many large cornices that will begin to heat up during the temperature inversion that is settling in this week. These often catch people by surprise, breaking back much further from the edge than we'd expect. Keep that in mind if you are traveling along ridgelines, and be sure to limit spending time under them since they can release naturally.