Persistent Slabs
- Alpine
- Treeline
- Below treeline
- Likelihood
- Possible
- Size
- 3
Yesterday's storm may be enough additional weight needed to wake up our problem child, a persistent weak layer of snow, now buried close to the ground in our early season snowpack. And while it's been nearly a week since we've heard from this layer of snow, in reality little has changed on this front and that's why it's call "persistent". You see, anything "persistent" in a snowpack takes a long time to heal and that's where it gets a little tricky. As the weak layers grow slightly stronger and get comfortable in their own skin you can ride some steep slopes, often without incident, giving us a false sense of snowpack stability. However, all we need to do is find one weakness, maybe around a bush or rock that we can't see buried underneath the snow, collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a scary avalanche. The way I'm avoiding this scenario is by simply avoiding the terrain where this setup exists- steep, upper elevation, north facing slopes that harbored snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. With plenty of safe options, there's no reason to pull on the avalanche dragons tail. But wait... here's the good news. There's a lot of terrain to ride today and not have to deal with unmanageable avalanche conditions, IF you chose slopes that had NO old snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm.
Micheal J was in upper Weber Canyon yesterday and his pit profile clearly shows our current setup. Micheal's snowpit stability tests suggest a strengthening snowpack (good news), but failures continue to revolve around weak, basal snow (bad news). What this means is... it might be harder to initiate a slide, but the piece of snow you trigger will dangerously break to the ground.
So here's your exit strategy... simply swing around to the south half of the compass where there's no junk in the trunk, ride in the sun, and you can have a blast!
