East Slopes North

Generally safe avalanche conditions are expected to continue in the East North zone. Focus your stability assessment on the settled snow over a crust. Challenging travel may exist at lower elevations where snow coverage is thin. 

A week of relatively benign weather has led to generally safe avalanche conditions within the zone. With minimal new inputs on Thursday night and Friday, conditions won't be changing much. A slight uptick in wind could help build out cornices slightly or create a few pockets of wind-drifted snow at upper elevations. We do not believe any of these will be large enough to cross the threshold into consequential avalanches. 

NWAC forecasters and avalanche professionals hit the ground on Thursday to take a look at our snowpack post-atmospheric river event. They traveled to Willow Creek, Cutthroat Creek, and the West Fork of Cedar. On average, they found 20-25cm of well-settled recent storm snow over the stout and supportable Early February Crust. The depth obviously varied throughout the terrain, with lower elevations having as little as 5cm and favored upper elevation terrain containing as much as 45cm. The storm snow was found to have a reasonably good bond to the underlying surface but did show some signs of instability on steep, unsupported features. This was more of the exception rather than the rule, but keep loose avalanches on your radar if you're taking advantage of these conditions to venture into extreme terrain. Small (0.33mm) facets were found in some locations above the Early February Crust and bare watching moving forward.

Another positive takeaway from the day is that we feel more confident putting our persistent weak layers (early January facets and the December facet/crust) to bed. NWAC and avalanche professionals dug multiple pits and found that these layers had seen water percolation during the atmospheric river event. Deep tap tests did not produce notable results. With the Early February Crust measuring 15-30cm on average, a good bridge should help put our minds at ease for the time being.

Observations continue to be limited from Hart's Pass and the eastern mountains. If you're traveling in these areas, let us know what you find by submitting a public observation.