Gunnison

Normal caution is expected for backcountry travel today. Isolated areas with potentially unstable snow include those where you find a few inches or more of wet snow, which could lead to wet avalanches on steep slopes, or perhaps at upper elevations where an old wind slab could be lingering in extreme terrain.

A winter storm at the beginning of the week, produced a few wind slab avalanches and a cycle of wet loose avalanches. It will be difficult to still find a reactive wind slab today, and the best place would be some northerly facing slope at upper elevations where an old wind slab could be sitting on a thin layer of facets. The wet loose avalanche cycle has also come and gone for the time being. Snow surfaces are crusty around the compass, with only a few holdouts on some due north-facing terrain featuers, generally above 11,000ft. As those crusts soften later today, areas that develop a few inches or more of wet snow could continue to produce small loose wet avalanches. The snowpack has been through several big warmups already this spring, and it should continue to tolerate the current weather. If you were able to find a steep slope where you were sinking deeply into a wet and unsupported snowpack, it would be good to decrease your slope angles and move to colder snow, as we can never completely rule out the isolated chance for a wet slab avalanche in those conditions.