Stevens Pass

Cooling temperatures and surface freezes have reduced the avalanche danger. If you find wet snow that's unsupportive to skis or boots, consider that you may be dealing with more dangerous conditions. Be prepared for slick and firm travel conditions.

Temperatures have begun to cool, and surface crusts are getting thicker. Non-avalanche hazards may dominate your risk management decisions. These could include challenging travel on slick, frozen surfaces and terrain hazards like open creeks and glide cracks.

On Friday, observers reported supportive surface crusts. We anticipate this trend will continue on Saturday. It's possible that increasing cloud cover on Friday night could keep surfaces from freezing as solidly. You can check the freeze by standing on the snow without your travel equipment (skis, board, snowshoes, or machine). If you sink into wet or moist snow above the top of your boots, there's a chance that you could trigger a wet avalanche. Glide avalanches typically occur on rock slabs, and they're very difficult to predict. It's worth continuing to limit your exposure to these terrain features, especially where you see open glide cracks in the snow. Don't travel on or linger under steep rock slabs and smooth slopes. 

During a prolonged rain event in the last week of January, water percolated through the snowpack. It reached the ground in many places, aside from the highest elevations. Snow has pulled away from rocks and cliffs, and glide cracks opened up. On Thursday, we visited a profile study site near Skyline Lake and found about 6ft of snow on the ground. The Solstice crust was 3.5ft down and still produced sudden collapse failures with a deep tap test and propagating test results with a propagation saw test. By Saturday, the solid freeze capping this weak layer should be enough to make it very difficult to trigger avalanches on it.

On Tuesday, Stevens Pass Mountain Resort reported a handful of very large avalanches with control work and at least one D3 that took out trees. Slides stepped down to old weak layers, and one path even slid twice (hangfire took out the bed surface of a slide that was triggered earlier in the day). A very large natural avalanche (D3) was observed in the Chiwaukum Range, along with a number of smaller slides that ran on the ground (see photo). Some of these slides may have taken out trees, and left nasty streaks of dirt in their wake.  

If you make it out, please share what you found with an observation.