Gunnison

We are in a rare mid-winter window of generally safe avalanche conditions.  It's a great time to travel in the mountains.  You can find trouble in extreme terrain or steep gullies, where triggered sluffs or thin soft slabs could gather volume.  A handful of such avalanches involving the recent snow ran naturally or were triggered over the weekend. Stay alert and defensive in high-consequence terrain.  

Friday's storm left us with a few inches of settled powder over a mix of crusts and faceted surfaces.  Winds have been light and variable since, with moderate alpine gusts last night.  The new snow caused an uptick in shallow surface instabilities over the weekend (See video), most commonly loose snow avalanches across all aspects and elevations (example A, example B, example C).  We also observed a few avalanches break as soft slabs where there was just enough wind at high elevations to add some cohesion to the snow (example A, example B).  There could be a few more pockets of wind drifted slabs out there today after a small bump in wind speeds overnight.   All of these issues are relatively small and harmless unless you are riding in sustained steeps or high-consequence terrain.   In gullies or above terrain traps, use sluff management techniques.  Ride one at a time and pull out of harm's way before you stop.  A radio or good communication with your partners is also helpful to avoid surprises.    

If you look at our avalanche activity rose, you can see that almost all of the avalanches in our forecast region this month have been small.  Explosives triggered three large deep slabs earlier this month in steep, rocky terrain that faces north to west, where the snowpack tends to be shallower and more variable.  Our concerns for avalanches breaking on weak layers near the ground have diminished significantly over the past few weeks of relatively dry weather.  The quiet weather pattern, along with no obvious signs of deep instabilities or human-triggered slides, and improved snowpack tests all suggest deep layers are dormant for now.  It's unusual for us not to be warning of persistent slabs this time of year, and it's a great opportunity to step out into more complex terrain.   We are noting a lot of very steep and committing terrain choices going down across our forecast area.  With bigger or more extreme terrain comes higher consequences, even for very small avalanches.  Keep that at the forefront of your decision-making and group communications.  

Tomorrow's snowfall will gently nudge the hazard a few notches higher by adding volume to sluffs and potentially increasing the threat of shallow soft slabs.  The current trajectory of the storm looks to keep us just shy of MODERATE danger on Tuesday.  Check back in tomorrow for the most current assessment.