Avalanche forecast

Chilkat Pass

Haines Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Alpine
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Treeline
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Below
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Out of date — this forecast expired 3 years ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

Road closures continue. Lack of access brings a high uncertainty of conditions. Once the border opens, an assessment mindset will be needed to safely gather information about recent storm snow and winds that have affected this area.

Avalanche problems

  • Storm Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Possible
    Size
    1–2.5

    17" of low density snow fell in the pass Dec 23-26 before inverted temperatures and warm air in the alpine blaketed it with denser, stiffer, more suppotable snow on top. This top heavy, upside down, high density over  low density snow creates the ingredients for Storm Slab avalanches. The likelyhood of human triggered avalanches is possible. 

    Keep an eye out for signs of wind slab formation, things like cracking, hollowness, and cohesive surface snow. Test slopes are also useful if they can be tested safely. These instabilities can last between a few hours and a few days and are distributed widely across terrain receiving similar snowfall amounts. You can reduce your risk by waiting a day or two after the storm before venturing into steeper terrain.  Additionally, beware of smaller slopes such as gullies, road-cuts and un-suspecting slopes steeper than 30 degrees that could act as terrain traps where even a small slide could pile snow up quickly and make a rescue very difficult.

Avalanche Discussion

With increased snowfall, it's a good time to reset your mindset and look at the surface snow with new eyes.

Deeper down, a few melt-freeze layers are present throughout the snowpack at all elevations and aspects. These layers have mostly been found to be healing but could fail and produce an unlikely though larger avalanche. Our overall warmer and wetter temperature regime this season has helped slow the development of persistent weak layers (PWL's) in the snowpack. However at higher elevations and further inland these grain types can exist, and will require continued assessment.

The people you go out with, the way you communicate, and the way you practice risk reduction as a team throughout the day is equally important as the conditions.

Help us gather information about weather, snowpack, and avalanche activity by reading and submitting field observations. Useful observations can be anonymous and include: 

  • Natural or human-triggered avalanche activity
  • Signs of instability: Cracking, collapsing, or whumpinng
  • Red Flag Weather: Precipitation, wind loading, warming temperatures and rain-on-snow
  • Surface hoar growth, snow depth, persistent weak layers, etc
  • Snow stability tests, or pit result and location, elevation, aspect, etc 

Were you caught, carried, injured or buried in a slide? We are all human and can benefit from lessons learned, please report incidents to Haines Avalanche Center staff confidentially.

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