Avalanche Forecast

Moderate -

Tuesday's storm produced natural storm slab avalanches in alpine terrain and numerous small skier triggered avalanches (size 1) on small steep slopes.On Saturday, a group of skiers remotely triggered a large (size 2) avalanche on a northeast facing slope at treeline in the Corbin area. The skiers were in dense trees and the avalanche released roughly 60 m above them. One skier was fully buried and the group successfully extricated them without significant injuries. For full MIN incident report follow this link.

Tuesday's storm hit the region with 40 cm of new snow, forming fresh storm slabs at upper elevations. The precipitation fell as rain below 1500 m, leaving moist snow on the surface.Roughly 50-80 cm of snow now sits above a weak layer composed of large surface hoar, facets, and/or sun crusts. There have been numerous signs over the past few days that this layer remains weak (e.g. remote triggering from low angle terrain, wide propagations in avalanches), and the additional load of the new snow could be pushing this layer past the tipping point.Several other weak layers have been observed in the lower snowpack such as early season crusts with weak facets. The most concerning crust is prevalent at higher elevations and is likely most problematic on north-facing features, especially those that are large and planar in nature.