East Slopes South

Cool temperatures will maintain firm and frozen snow surfaces and limit the potential for avalanches. Low snow cover throughout the East South Zone continues to create challenging access and rough travel conditions.

Cloudy skies and a chance for light precipitation Wednesday night may allow for a trace of new snow to accumulate at the highest elevations. Strong westerly winds may blow fresh snow into shallow and isolated drifts, but any new snow and wind loading doesn't look significant enough to create an avalanche problem. It will take more to fill in the existing rough snow surfaces, and the most significant result of any light snow accumulations may be a fresh crop of rollerballs near the Cascade Crest when the sun comes out Thursday.

NWAC staff ventured out to the Pinegrass Ridge area off Hwy 12 Wednesday and found a shallow snowpack with limited potential for avalanches. There was no new snow in the immediate area, despite nearby White Pass picking up 1-2in in the past 24 hours. Regular grooming in recent weeks compacted snow on roads maintaining access through an otherwise snow-free landscape at lower elevations. No new avalanches were observed, and many southerly slopes were melted out to ridgetop. Fortunately, a cooler-weather regime will be in place through the weekend to help any existing snow cover hang on, and a promising winter storm looks to impact the region next week. 

Avalanche conditions are generally safe and simply gaining access to higher elevation terrain could be your biggest challenge. You will need to use summer roads and trails to get to continuous snow coverage. While most lower elevation and southerly slopes have already gone bare, deeper snowpacks seem to continue to hang on near Bumping Ridge and Mt Aix.