East Slopes North

While avalanche concerns are generally minimal, there is an unlikely possibility of triggering an avalanche in a pocket of wind-drifted snow. We expect this to be isolated to very steep, confined alpine terrain. Most hazards you'll encounter are probably related to challenging travel on breakable crusts. 

With minimal snow available for transport, we expect any wind slabs from Thursday's blustery conditions to be small and limited in distribution. Use caution below ridgelines, near rocky chutes, and steep unsupported leeward slopes where you see deeper drifts of wind-affected snow.  If you see shooting cracks or recent avalanches, steer around similar wind-loaded slopes. 

After a couple of days with sunny skies and warm temperatures, Thursday brought strong winds and much colder temperatures to the zone. This ended the previous wet avalanche concerns, and southerly slopes now have surface melt-freeze crusts. We expect more hazards from challenging conditions on breakable crusts than avalanche concerns. Lower elevations were spared the warm-up due to strong inversions, and you might find softer snow conditions in the valleys than in upper elevations.  Observers reported near surface facets and surface hoar in areas further east in the zone. 

The upper snowpack consists of variable surfaces, including surface crusts, stiff wind-affected snow, surface hoar, and weak or faceting snow. The most recent interface (1/10) consists of facets and surface hoar, sometimes over a melt-freeze crust on southerly slopes. This interface produced initial wind and storm slab avalanches last weekend but seems to be gaining strength. A layer of surface hoar buried on Jan 1st was observed widespread throughout the zone and is buried 6-8inches deep. This layer has not produced any avalanches, but it is worth noting that both the 1/1 surface hoar and the 1/10 interface have yet to be tested by a significant storm, so we can't write them off yet. The mid-pack also has a few notable melt-freeze crusts that produced unstable test results earlier in the month. The Solstice Crust is buried 3-5ft deep, depending on your location in the zone. We currently don't have concerns around the Solstice Crust, but it is a good marker to identify within the snowpack. 

If you're out in the mountains,  share what you see and submit an observation.