Whitefish Range

 Expect to find a relatively benign avalanche hazard in the Whitefish Range today. Isolated slabs of wind drifted snow above roughly 6500 feet will be possible to trigger but harmless in size. Steer around and tuck in below pillowy-looking surfaces and corniced ridgelines. This time of year, a ride in a small avalanche can have significant consequences due to thinly covered rocks, logs, and stumps. Manage your downslope exposure appropriately.

Winter is back, and we are excited to begin issuing daily avalanche advisories for the 2021-2022 season. Thankfully unseasonably warm temperatures ended, and the rain turned to snow in the past few days. We hope you begin to follow along and add reading the forecast to your daily routine.

Today we can expect to see roughly 2 to 5 inches of new snow with mostly light winds. This snow will likely only add to riding quality without posing additional avalanche hazards. IF the storm overproduces and you see eight or more inches of new snow pile up, manage your sluff with defensive riding strategies and stick to terrain with lower slope angles.

New snow on Saturday clicked the refresh button throughout our forecast area. Remote weather stations in the Flathead Range and the Swan Range picked up roughly 8 to 14 inches of snow, and the Whitefish Range followed along with 4 to 8 inches. This low-density snow fell on a slick crust and a thick supportable slab that blankets the landscape at mid and upper elevations where old snow existed. In this terrain type, be ready to manage loose dry sluffs in areas sheltered from the wind. Be cautious of slabs of drifted snow in wind-loaded terrain features and especially so in the alpine terrain of the Flathead Range, Glacier National Park, or the Swan Range. 

Yesterday Mark and I found a surprisingly deep snowpack at around 7000 feet in the Whitefish Range. Numerous layers exist in the snowpack due to the plentiful rain events and bouts of warm temperatures. We found a 2-foot thick hard slab below the new snow with two distinct weak layers further down. See observation for more details. There is a higher than usual degree of uncertainty due to a lack of observations. Please let us know what you saw using the observation tab if you get out into the mountains. It makes for a more accurate forecast.