West Slopes Central

A soggy snowpack and minimal avalanche activity will greet you on Wednesday. Prepare for challenging travel with a highly variable but mainly wet snowpack and exposed, or thinly-covered early-season hazards. 

Numbers vary throughout the zone, but we'll have received around half an inch of water as the system clears out of the area in the early morning hours. Most elevations received rain, but above 6500 feet or so, much of the water fell as snow. There's a very small chance that if you travel to the uppermost portions of our upper elevation band you could find and trigger an isolated small wind slab avalanche, although unlikely. 

At mid and lower elevations, we've already gone through so many melt-freeze cycles and the snowpack has taken such a beating that half an inch of water and these warmer temperatures probably aren't enough to produce wet avalanche activity. If you find yourself easily punching into wet snow past your knees to the ground, it's probably a good idea to steer around steep terrain, especially if the underlying surfaces are smooth grass or rock. 

Temperatures are a few degrees above freezing at 5000ft, and it's likely to stay that way until Friday. A bit of sun on Wednesday and Thursday might mean we'll get small amounts of surface freezing, especially overnight, and some moisture draining out of the snowpack. Snowpack heights are about 3ft at 5000ft. Consistent snow cover doesn't start until about 3000ft, and steep, south-facing aspects hold a shallower snowpack than shadier terrain. Below 5000ft much of the snowpack is wet. Above 5000ft we suspect a good portion of the snowpack is wet as well, both at the surface from the recent rain, and the bottom half of the snowpack as well. 

There are still plenty of open creeks, exposed or partially buried rocks, stumps, and deposits of old, chunky avalanche debris. Stay vigilant to early season hazards. Now that we've got a couple days of nice weather, if you get out in the West Central zone please send us an  observation so we can have more information about this zone.