Avalanche forecast

East Slopes Central

Northwest Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Sat
Alpine
2 · Moderate
Treeline
1 · Low
Below
1 · Low
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Out of date — this forecast expired 6 months ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

Avalanche hazard is elevated in areas that have been collecting moderate amounts of new snow, namely Mission Ridge and the Salmon La Sac drainage. Be sure you can travel effectively around loose snow collecting as it moves downslope. Maneuver around steep downwind slopes if you encounter cracking or recent slab avalanches in wind affected snow. Consider the consequences of being carried in a small avalanche on whatever slope you plan to descend.

Avalanche problems

  • Loose Dry

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Possible
    Size
    1–1.5

    It will be relatively easy to get cold, low-density snow moving over a crust on slopes steeper than 40 degrees. Managing a loose dry avalanche problem is all about "managing your sluff". That means more deliberate and slow travel away from terrain traps where snow will entrain down into. Pause to let sluff pass if it's growing too big, or if you need to change direction. You will increase the consequences of being knocked over by sluff if you travel in cliffy or rocky terrain. This problem is unlikely on middle to lower elevation south and westerly slopes, as these areas generally lack consistent snow coverage.

    (2/19/2026)

    Reactive dry loose sluffing pictured here on a steep slope.

    Photo: Payton Schiff

  • Wind Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Possible
    Size
    1–1.5

    An uptick in wind will have the potential to easily transport light, dry snow and build fresh slabs on Thursday night and Friday. Wind slabs typically form just below ridgelines and within concave terrain features (cross loading). Blowing or drifting snow will be your first easily identifiable sign that slabs are being built. Also keep an eye out for other visual and tactile clues such as textured surfaces, soft, freshly formed difts/cornices, and a change to denser feeling snow beneath your equipment. Slabs will be small, but you might find an isolated deeper pocket of older wind drifted snow in extreme, high elevation terrain. 

    There are widespread buried weak layers within the snowpack that could be finally overloaded by slabs building on top. It's worth a minute of your time to dig small hand pits and check the bond between interfaces. A wind slab failing on one of these layers has the potential to propagate more widely than expected.

    (1/5/2026)

    Cracking in wind loaded snow is a red flag that wind slabs exist in lee terrain.

    Photo: Payton Schiff

Avalanche Discussion

The East Central zone has stacked up enough new snow that avalanche conditions are no longer generally safe. They're not generally dangerous either. There's a lot of potential for different weather inputs to create varied and elevated avalanche hazard, and Friday is ultimately not the day to step directly out into consequential terrain before doing some research.

In addition to dry loose and wind slab avalanche problems, there's a chance of encountering wet loose avalanche hazard when the sun pokes out midday on Friday. If you notice surfaces becoming sticky and seeing chunks of snow falling from cliffs and trees, mark that as a sign that the snowpack is warming and weakening. Similar to a dry loose problem, a wet loose avalanche would most likely be small, but able to carry you into exposed hazards.

NWAC Forecasters traveled to Mission Ridge and the Salmon La Sac on Thursday. These two areas have picked up the most snow in the zone since the onset of stormier weather around Valentine's Day, and both areas continued to receive light snowfall throughout the day on Thursday. The forecasters at Mission found around 7 inches of new and recent snow at upper elevations overlaying a complex of buried weak layers, including buried surface hoar and faceted snow around a hard crust that formed on 02/07. The 02/07 crust is supportable to skis, but not boots or snowmobiles. The forecaster in the La Sac found around 11 inches of new/recent snow at the same elevation band, overlaying a very similar snowpack structure. At the moment, all this new snow is soft and lacks the cohesion to create the right slab characteristics for a persistent slab avalanche problem, but the weak layers are there underneath, waiting to be tested.

This return to winter is slowly improving travel conditions, but you'll still find very low snow coverage at lower elevations, and in the Wenatchees at all elevations. Give yourself some extra time and precaution to manage these exposed hazards, and know that some may be obscured by new snow.

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