Bulletin d’avalanche

East Cabinet Mountains

Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center
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Danger d’avalanche

Mon
Alpin
2 · Modéré
Limite forestière
2 · Modéré
Sous la limite
1 · Faible
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Périmé — ce bulletin a expiré 5 months ago. Vous consultez des conditions passées, pas le bulletin en cours.

Points saillants

Below freezing temperatures and clear skies overnight likely yields a decent snowpack refreeze and should help pump the brakes on wet snow problems. Slopes facing east through south to west could soften during the day from sunny skies and warming temperatures, and where the snow surface is more likely to become wet and unconsolidated. Pay attention to how supportive snow surfaces are and limit travel near steeper terrain if you see rollerballs, wet snow sluffs, or sink past boot tops into rotten snow.

Problèmes avalancheux

  • Loose Wet

    • Alpin
    • Limite forestière
    • Sous la limite forestière
    Probabilité
    Possible
    Taille
    1–2

    Over 5 days of above-freezing temperatures and wetting rains, the upper snowpack became wet and unconsolidated. This triggered a widespread natural cycle of Loose Wet avalanches originating from steeper slopes and gullies, and around cliff bands. Finally, skies cleared and temperatures dropped below freezing overnight Saturday for the first time creating optimal conditions for strong radiational cooling allowing the surface to refreeze. 

    Now that the upper snowpack is starting to lock up, water draining through the snowpack will slowly diminish. Despite no rain forecast over the next 48 hours, snow surfaces could still soften during peak daytime warming from abundant sunshine and increasing sun angles. The good news is, every time the snowpack goes through a softening-refreezing cycle, it will progressively become more difficult to provoke a wet snow slide. Be willing to adjust recreation to shadier slopes in the afternoon, and don’t linger in depressions or other terrain traps where small slides can become more concerning where debris can pile up deeper than expected.

    (3/20/2026)

    A small, natural Loose Wet avalanche on a west-facing slope above Roman Nose lake naer 6,000 feet. This slide was triggered by steady rain wetting the snow surface on March 20. 

    Photo: Jeff Thompson

  • Wet Slabs

    • Alpin
    • Limite forestière
    • Sous la limite forestière
    Probabilité
    Possible
    Taille
    1.5–2

    Steady rains and warm temperatures helped drive free water deeper into the snowpack over the last week. As the water percolated through upper snowpack layers, observations noted it pooling in softer layers around harder ones, and around shallowly buried crusts. The presence of water above or below a crust and in a softer layer helps weaken individual grain bonds and makes it more susceptible for the wet slab of snow above to fail. This more dangerous wet snow problem often behaves in surprising ways, releasing spontaneously and offering no warning clues before failure.  

    Now that a cooler weather regime is returning, the flow of water through the snowpack will subside but can get hung up in certain layers longer than you’d think. In the aftermath of such a warm, wet period, give the snowpack on steeper slopes a bit of respect as Wet Slab avalanches have and can release several days after the faucet was turned off. Cliff bands and slopes with lots of vegetation provide pathways for water to push deeper into more concerning layers and up the chances for slabs of wet snow to fail.

    An annotated pit profile showing the progression of rain and meltwater into the upper snowpack. Places where the water pools, in softer layers around harder ones and around crusts, could help provoke the snowpack to fail as a more dangerous, less predictable wet slab.

    March 18, 2026.

    Photo: Jackson George

Avalanche Discussion

From March 16 to 21, the majority of our mountains received around 1.5 inches of rain. The Southern Selkirk, and East and West Cabinet Mountains that were victim to the unfortunate atmospheric river bulls-eye landed in the 2.5 to 3.5 inches of rain category. This burst of liquid precipitation came almost immediately on the heels of a cold snowy period that delivered 2 to 5 feet of snow. This is the perfect recipe for many large to very large Wet Slab avalanches, right? So far, that has not been verified, but travel in the mountains during steady rain is often much less than under sunny skies or blissful power.

The limited field observations on file this week did report many Loose Wet avalanches across all aspects and elevations originating from all the common places - steeper terrain, gullies, and below rocks/ cliff bands. As they moved further downhill, the debris entrained additional snow volume but most individual slides remained small in size. Where they occurred in clusters, the debris approached size 2 and contained enough volume to catch and potentially bury a person or machine.

Now that cooler weather has returned and we are not expecting meaningful rain for a couple of days, our aforementioned wet hazards will continue to be less concerning. It’s nearly impossible to know exactly when or how many days it takes free water to fully drain through the snowpack or get sponged up. Each time the snow surface refreezes overnight, additional water input quickly decreases. However, daytime warming can turn the flow back on so day to day evaluations around surface softening-wetting are prudent in the spring.

The weather that helped evolve and shape the snowpack across our forecast zones over the last 53 days has not disappointed. 53 days ago is when the first of two surface hoar layers got buried. Over this period, these layers produced many natural avalanches, provided propagating failures in tests, and made the snowpack very vocal for an extended period. With each loading period, our test results changed and natural avalanches as a result of these layers became fewer in number. After a wet, warm period and now buried over a meter deep with no new reported avalanches in these layers, we decided to remove the Persistent Slab avalanche problem - but not erased from the avalanche brain.

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IPAC is now on the Avy app! View, submit, and share observations on the go using the AvyApp. Your backcountry observations are critical for building our avalanche forecasts. Avy provides a centralized location for core trip planning, and you can view streamlined, up-to-date avalanche and weather forecasts for your selected zone, using offline caching. Download Avy today - App Store and Google Play.

 

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