Avalanche forecast

Lutak

Haines Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Sat
Alpine
3 · Considerable
Treeline
3 · Considerable
Below
2 · Moderate
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Out of date — this forecast expired 3 years ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

Today's new storm snow (up to a foot deep by evening) is poorly bonded with the old crusty surface, and will be prone to human triggering of avalanches. Keep your uptracks and down tracks in low-risk areas, by avoiding convexities, steep open slopes, and terrain traps. If you venture through avalanche terrain, manage it carefully and travel one-at-a-time through any exposed areas.

Avalanche problems

  • Storm Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    1–2

    In the last 24 hours around 9" of new snow fell. Today we expect snowfall to increase and become heavy by afternoon. This storm will also bring  warm air aloft which will be battling cool north winds in the fjord. Expect increasing snowfall, warming temperatures, and wet/heavy snow. This will create an upside-down structure in the new snow (weak underneath, slabby on top). Human triggered surface avalanches will be likely.

    Keep an eye out for signs of wind slab formation, things like cracking, hollowness, and cohesive surface snow. Test slopes are also useful if they can be tested safely. These instabilities can last between a few hours and a few days and are distributed widely across terrain receiving similar snowfall amounts. You can reduce your risk by waiting a day or two after the storm before venturing into steeper terrain.  Additionally, beware of smaller slopes such as gullies, road-cuts and un-suspecting slopes steeper than 30 degrees that could act as terrain traps where even a small slide could pile snow up quickly and make a rescue very difficult.

Avalanche Discussion

With snowfall increasing again, it's a good time to reset your mindset and look at the surface snow with new eyes.

Deeper down, a few melt-freeze layers are present throughout the snowpack at all elevations and aspects. These layers have mostly been found to be healing but could fail and produce an unlikely though larger avalanche. Our overall warmer and wetter temperature regime this season has helped slow the development of persistent weak layers (PWL's) in the snowpack. However at higher elevations and further inland these grain types can exist, and will require continued assessment.

The people you go out with, the way you communicate, and the way you practice risk reduction as a team throughout the day is equally important as the conditions.

Help us gather information about weather, snowpack, and avalanche activity by reading and submitting field observations. Useful observations can be anonymous and include: 

  • Natural or human-triggered avalanche activity
  • Signs of instability: Cracking, collapsing, or whumpinng
  • Red Flag Weather: Precipitation, wind loading, warming temperatures and rain-on-snow
  • Surface hoar growth, snow depth, persistent weak layers, etc
  • Snow stability tests, or pit result and location, elevation, aspect, etc 

Were you caught, carried, injured or buried in a slide? We are all human and can benefit from lessons learned, please report incidents to Haines Avalanche Center staff confidentially.

 

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