Avalanche forecast

Summit Lake

Chugach National Forest Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Tue
Alpine
2 · Moderate
Treeline
1 · Low
Below
1 · Low
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Out of date — this forecast expired last year. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

There is still a chance someone could trigger an avalanche on a weak layer of snow buried up to a foot deep at upper elevations. This is most concerning where there are areas of recent wind drifted snow that could be up to a foot deep or deeper. This type of avalanche can be hard to assess, so for now we recommend avoiding big bowls or high-consequence terrain like slopes above gullies, cliffs, or trees.

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Come find us at the Seattle Ridge motorized parking lot on Saturday, March 22 for our annual Turnagain Pass Avalanche Awareness Day! We will be there with Alaska Mining and Diving Supply and the Alaska Avalanche School to chat about avalanches and current conditions and to hang out with the good people of the southcentral Alaska winter community. AMDS will have demo snowmachines, and we’ll be holding down the grill and the fire pit. Stop by anytime from noon until 4:00 p.m. Details Here.

Avalanche problems

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Possible
    Size
    1–2

    It may have snowed a few inches here and there at Turnagain lately, but yet again Summit Lake has only seen a trace to an inch over the past couple days. With such little new snow for weeks now, it's the weak snowpack and old wind drifted snow that are driving the avalanche concerns. 

    The short story is triggering an avalanche on a weak layer of buried surface hoar remains possible. This layer is roughly a foot deep. If you have not seen it yet, check out the video here of a skier walking along Colorado ridge triggering collapses/whumps in the snowpack. The skier is essentially causing the weak layer to collapse into itself. This is a bullseye clue that the snowpack is unstable. On the flip side, weak layers like this don't always give us signs the snowpack is unstable and snowpack stability tests can be unreliable. This makes things tricker than we'd like. 

    If you are headed out to Summit, keep in mind this is most concerning in places where snow has been drifted into a thicker slab on top of the weak layer, or towards the north end of Summit Lake where there has been more snowfall over the past month. This layer has produced many avalanches in the Turnagain Pass and Seward zones, and we suspect the only reason it hasn't been as big of a problem in Summit lake is because there just isn't as much snow on top of it yet. 

    Buried in the bottom half of the snowpack are other old weak layers of faceted snow. These layers appear to be dormant for now and not producing avalanches. Despite this, we will continue to monitor them. They could become a problem again with a new load of snow or wind or warm temperatures as spring arrives. 

    Glide avalanches are still releasing, especially in the Girdwood area. It's always good protocol to look for and avoid as best as possible travel under glide cracks.

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