West Slopes Central

You may be able to trigger shallow wind slabs on very steep, upper elevation slopes. These avalanches will probably be small, but could do serious harm if they take you off a cliff, smash you into a rock, or dump you into a gully.  Hard and variable surfaces make travel difficult on all sunny aspects and below about 4500ft on shaded slopes.

A couple inches of snow fell Tuesday morning, but it wasn’t enough to fully moderate the firm/variable/punchy conditions below treeline and on solar aspects in the alpine. Winds have been light to moderate from the south and are forecast to swing to the north Tuesday evening as colder Canadian air moves in. The associated front doesn’t appear to be very energetic, but there is a chance we will get a brief period of blustery winds capable of moving and drifting snow. 

At this point there are several iterations of old slab and wind effect in the alpine. If you find an instability, it will likely be isolated and shallow. Unfortunately, even small avalanches can ruin a day under certain circumstances. Use test slopes to see if you can get the surface snow to crack, collapse, or slide prior to moving into more consequential terrain. 

Wednesday is forecast to be clear and cool. You may encounter rollerballs, or very small wet loose avalanches around rocks on southerly slopes. That said, my guess is that the difficulty in safely navigating breakable, hard, and variable surfaces [on sunny slopes] will far outweigh the wet snow hazard.