Salt River and Wyoming Ranges

Human triggered avalanches are unlikely though you might find and trigger a small wind slab or some loose snow sluffs in very steep, isolated areas. As always, travel one at a time, keep an eye on your partners and avoid riding above terrain traps.

A weak weather disturbance dropped a couple inches of snow around 36 hours ago. A period of strong wind redistributed that snow early yesterday morning and built some small wind slabs. Reported avalanches have been up to a foot thick. These slabs have been small in surface area and isolated in distribution, occurring near ridgetops or very steep rock wind affected terrain. Buried, preserved surface hoar exists in places around all forecast areas but has no slab on top. Keep an eye on temps, wind and cloud cover today to better avoid wet snow problems.

Keep your avalanche brain engaged as you travel around the mountains and pay attention to snow conditions. Any patterns that you recognize will play into current but mostly future avalanche problems. 

• Look out for cracking in very steep areas where wind slabs may have developed. These could be easy to trigger though small in size.
• Loose snow sluffs could grow big enough to push you around in very steep terrain. If you get into constricted terrain features, these could cause a problem. 

Both of these types of avalanches will be on the smaller side, but could spell trouble in consequential terrain.

Send us your observations and photos! Both are critical for staying informed of conditions.