Flathead Range & Glacier NP

Avalanche season can arrive well before winter. The terrain where avalanche hazards are most likely to develop during the fall months are glaciers, year-round snowfields, and steep gullies filled with wind-drifted snow. Avoid slopes like these as you hunt, hike, scramble, or check off a month in a turns-all-year quest, particularly if you aren't carrying a beacon, shovel, and probe. 

Early season conditions can be deceptive. The snow cover can appear too spotty or shallow to create avalanche hazards. Yet some terrain may in fact pose serious hazards. Among them:

• Glaciers and year-round snowfields: On these cold surfaces, early-season snowfall is slower to melt and can metamorphose into weak, faceted snow. As more snow accumulates above these facets, all three ingredients of a slab avalanche problem can exist: a bed surface (the glacier or permanent snow), a persistent weak layer (the facets), and a slab (storm snow). Avalanches in this terrain often run into unyielding talus, boulders, and scree on slopes below, so even small slides can have severe consequences. 
• Gullies, chutes, and couloirs: These features collect and hold more snow than surrounding terrain. They are shaded, and winds can top-load or cross-load them with drifting snow. With deeper, more continuous snow cover, they can look like attractive options for early-season turns, or appear to be just short obstacles to cross when traversing or side-hilling. However, drifted snow can create a Wind Slab avalanche hazard. And even small amounts of debris can pile up in gullies and chutes, making for deeper, longer, and harder-to-survive burials.

The characteristics that make these terrain features dangerous can be found on other slopes. And terrain traps that magnify the consequences of even small slides are widespread in early season. Meanwhile, walking on bare ground much of the day makes it easy to underestimate these threats. 

Set yourself and your friends up for a long, enjoyable season by looking for avalanche hazards whenever there's snow on the ground. Carry avalanche rescue gear if you are headed into upper elevation terrain where early-season snow lingers. And if you're not carrying avalanche rescue gear - you're hunting, or you're just out for a last hike in good weather - be extra diligent in identifying terrain likely to harbor avalanche hazards and extra cautious about exposing yourself to these hazards. Find an alternate route or turn back, so you get a whole winter of sliding on snow.

Save the date! The sixteenth annual Northern Rockies Snow and Avalanche Workshop is scheduled for Saturday, November 31st at the Whitefish Performing Arts Center. Click here for registration and updates on speakers and the program.