West Slopes North

Avalanche danger is generally low. Crusts will make for challenging travel in the coming days as temperatures plummet, especially at lower and mid elevations,  and they'll be the hardest on steep south-facing aspects. You'll have to hunt to find a spot where you could trigger an avalanche, but if you could trigger one anywhere it would probably be in areas that haven't formed a surface crust in extreme terrain on shady aspects at mid and upper elevations. 

After a hot day, dropping temperatures will leave our wet loose avalanche concerns behind us. In most areas, snow surfaces will lock up and we don't expect to see any avalanche activity. Most hazards will revolve around challenging snow surface conditions. We may get an inch of snow on Thursday which may just barely soften surfaces but won't increase the avalanche hazard. 

Avalanche concerns remain limited to shady aspects at mid and upper elevations in the new snow layers, but we believe it's unlikely you'll encounter avalanches in these areas. We received a late-breaking observation on Wednesday that in a far flung area of the West North zone, near the Canadian border, backcountry skiers experienced wumphing at around 4500ft, where temperatures have gotten much colder with inversions in the last few days. There was possibly weak snow 6in to 1ft down, above the 1/10 crust. No avalanches resulted. As they climbed higher, where temperatures have been warmer, they found the interface strengthened. 

A forecaster was in the Baker backcountry on Wednesday and found inconsistent results on the same layer. They found that in most areas there wasn't a notable weakness, but in a few locations there were still subtle failures that occurred in tests. Their main concern was wet snow problems on steep sunny slopes. If you find drifted snow most likely built up in gullies or around rock features on shady aspects, dig to the most recent interface, 6" to a foot or more down, investigate the bond and if snow easily slides on that layer, consider avoiding steep slopes nearby. Whumphing is another obvious red flag. We suspect any of these weaknesses will be isolated in location at best, but it's not completely out of the question that you could find one of these spots if you're really trying.

In other areas, steep south-facing aspects will have the hardest crust, as those areas baked in the sun the most. Off-aspects, like east and west will have thinner, possibly breakable crusts. Even north-facing slopes may have a subtle crust to upper elevations, as they were reported getting just barely moist on Wednesday.  Areas with thinner crusts, and shadier aspects, are target zones right now for our upcoming cold weather and facet (weak snow) development. This isn't much of a problem for right now, but when we eventually get precipitation, if it's snow on top of this layer, it could prove to be some spicy avalanche conditions. 

Lower elevations will have hard and bumpy surfaces, where old crusty tree bomb holes will leave even more hazardous locations for you to navigate around. These tree bomb holes, after such a warm day on Wednesday (temperatures reached to the mid 40's at 5000ft!) will also exist at mid elevations. Old piles of predominantly wet avalanches will set up like concrete, and it's best to completely avoid any of those frozen chickenhead debris piles.

If you make it into the backcountry, please share with us what you saw by submitting an observation HERE or on the App.