East Slopes South

Avalanches are unlikley and conditions are generally safe. Your greatest hazard will be navigating thin snow cover with plenty of shallowly buried obstacles.

Saturday looks to bring warming temperatures, strong winds, and increasing cloud cover ahead of an approaching storm. Expect visibility to worsen throughout the day so keep your return routes in mind. Precipitation is set to begin Saturday night with an uptick in avalanche danger by Sunday.  

There isn't much recent snow in the East South Zone to cause concern for avalanches. If you venture high into the alpine, especially closer to the Cascade Crest, look slope by slope to see if the terrain in front of you could hold a shallow wind slab. Simple clues like textured surfaces and sharp drifts point towards possibly wind-loaded slopes. Be leery of these areas in consequential terrain.

NWAC forecasters on Manastash Ridge Thursday and near Rimrock Lake (Hwy 12) Tuesday found only a dusting of snow at mid and lower elevations. These meager totals did very little to improve travel conditions. The prolonged dry and warm weather of January and February really took a toll on the snowpack. At lower elevations, much of the snow melted back to bare ground making access challenging in some parts of the zone. Similarly, shallow spots in the snowpack on more southerly slopes and near ridges shrunk exposing rocks, trees, and dirt. Fortunately, the snowpack increases dramatically as you ascend in elevation on more shaded terrain. It’s in these mid and upper elevations shaded areas that you might find weak layers within the snowpack. Numerous crusts and sugary facets have been observed at nearby Crystal Mt and White Pass. However, at the moment, they don’t have much of a slab above them and we don’t expect any avalanches on older snow layers.