West Slopes South

A laundry list of challenging snow conditions and early-season obstacles could make for tricky and potentially dangerous travel. Fortunately, avalanche concerns are few and far between.

Sadly, a weak storm system won’t bring much new snow to the West South zone on Thursday. A few lucky places could see an inch or two by early afternoon. Needless to say, this won’t create any significant avalanche concerns. Cloudy weather and stronger southerly winds from the storm will only help keep frozen surfaces frozen. 

If you travel to the higher reaches of the forecast area (7000-8000ft), you might find an isolated pocket of wind-drifted snow. South of the zone, on Mt Hood, an NWAC forecaster found exactly that on Wednesday. These table-size pockets weren’t really a hazard, but you wouldn’t want one to catch you by surprise and knock you over. With so many obstacles, even the tinniest slide could take you for a nasty ride. 

The most significant danger could come from difficult travel conditions. Frozen debris, flowing creeks, open holes, exposed rocks, logs, breakable crust, irregular surfaces… and the list goes on. Travel slowly and give yourself extra time to navigate these challenging early-season hazards. 

Wednesday’s nice weather gave us a better picture of this past weekend’s avalanche cycle. Observers at White Pass and Paradise both reported a significant number of wet avalanches from the atmospheric river. Most notable were the numerous very wide wet slab avalanches on Mt Rainier. Many span entire features! Several even occurred on very infrequent paths. Now, that rained-on snow has frozen, and the wet avalanche concerns diminished.