Persistent Slabs
- Alpine
- Treeline
- Below treeline
- Likelihood
- Possible
- Size
- 3
It's been a couple days since we've heard from our problem child, the persistent weak layer, now buried close to the ground in our early season snowpack... and of course, that's good news. But here's where it gets a little tricky. As the pack gets stronger it lures us into steep terrain, often without incident, giving us a false sense of snowpack stability. However, all we need to do is find one weakness, maybe around a bush or rock that we can't see buried underneath the snow, collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a scary avalanche. The way I'm avoiding this scenario is by simply avoiding the terrain where this setup exists- steep, upper elevation, north facing slopes that harbored snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. With plenty of safe options, there's no reason to pull on the avalanche dragons tail. But wait.... here's the good news. There's a lot of terrain to ride today and not have to deal with unmanageable avalanche conditions, IF you chose slopes that had NO old snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm.
Ted's snow profile from a north facing slope in upper Whitney Basin reveals our current problematic setup... the big Thanksgiving storm rests on weak snow near the ground.
So here's your exit strategy... simply swing around to the south half of the compass where there's no junk in the trunk, ride in the sun, and you can have a blast!
