Avoid exposure to slopes that have been baking in the sun. Cornices will become more unstable with the strong solar inputs. If they break off, one of the deeper persistent layers could fail, resulting in a very large avalanche!
Weather Forecast
A ridge of high pressure will bring sunny skies for today and tomorrow. Freezing levels will be around 2000m today and are forecast to go as high as 2400m on Monday. Mountain top winds light out of the NW with possible locally moderate winds at some locations. On Monday evening low pressure may move in and bring some light precip on Tuesday.
Snowpack Summary
A variety of crusts exist on solar aspects and lower elev N asp in the top meter. Cold temps overnight resulted in a good freeze of the surface crusts, these will weaken quickly today with the forecast warming and direct solar. In the alpine on N aspects, powder can be found. Deeper in the snowpack there exists weak layers that remain a concern.
Avalanche Summary
Yesterdays solar inputs were not enough to produce any significant activity, today will be a different story with strong direct sun. A few days ago, glide crack release and slab avalanches to size 3.0 were observed. Loose wet slides to size 2.0 on solar aspects were more common and a possible trigger to the slab releases.
Problems
Loose Wet
Loose Wet avalanches are the release of wet unconsolidated snow or slush. These avalanches typically occur within layers of wet snow near the surface of the snowpack, but they may quickly gouge into lower snowpack layers. Like Loose Dry Avalanches, they start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-wet avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs. Loose Wet avalanches can trigger slab avalanches that break into deeper snow layers.
Storm Slabs
Storm Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer (a slab) of new snow that breaks within new snow or on the old snow surface. Storm-slabs typically last between a few hours and few days (following snowfall). Storm-slabs that form over a persistent weak layer (surface hoar, depth hoar, or near-surface facets) may be termed Persistent Slabs or may develop into Persistent Slabs.
Persistent Slabs
Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.