Bulletin d’avalanche

Elkhorns

Wallowa Avalanche Center
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Danger d’avalanche

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

Points saillants

The snowpack needs time to adjust to the significant new snow load it received on 12/30.  If you find the presence of a slab or observe cracking in the snow or recent avalanches look for simpler terrain.  Although beautiful weather Saturday and heeps of new snow will make it tempting to increase the throttle, it's still possible to trigger an avalanche today.   

Problèmes avalancheux

  • Storm Slabs

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

    The Wallowas and Elklhorns received up to 1.5 feet of light density snow on 12/30.  The saying goes, if you receive more than a foot of snow in 48 hours or less a Red Flag is raised.  Give the new snow time to bond to the old snow, and the snowpack time to adjust to the new load.  There's plenty of great skiing and riding that can be found on slopes less than 35 degrees.  If you do observe snow that has formed into a more cohesive slab, avoid consequential terrain and convex rolls, where you may be able to pop loose a large storm or wind slab.  

  • Loose Dry

    • Alpin
    • Limite forestière
    • Sous la limite forestière
    Probabilité
    Possible
    Taille
    1–1.5

    With arctic temperatures overnight, the new snow on the surface will have lost cohesion and the likelihood of triggering a dry loose sluff will increase.  Dry loose avalanches generally occur in steep terrain (>35 degrees) on convex rolls, and around rocks and trees.  Even a relatively small dry loose avalanche could pick up steam and deposit you into high consequence terrain.  If you see the presence of fanlike snow moving downhill, consider what the ill effects might be of getting caught up in a fast-moving dry loose avalanche.  

    (12/29/2021) null Photo: VM

Avalanche Discussion

The end of 2021 and the start of 2022 are bringing in some high-quality powder.  Arctic air and a NW Flow have delivered incredible riding conditions.  Currently, we are finding a strong snowpack, with good structure.  This is in part to the cold temperatures and continued snowfall. 

When we have long spells of high pressure, the upper snowpack starts to turn into weak sugar snow (facets).  If it warms up above freezing we start to see melt-freeze crusts on the snow surface.  The combination of crusts and sugar snow increases the potential for avalanche activity.  So for now, we are primarily dealing with surface instabilities (meaning storm and wind slabs, or dry loose).  We are fortunate as some mountain ranges like the Sawtooths in ID are dealing with weak sugar snow at the base of their snowpack, and therefore have seen some large avalanche cycles recently.  

Please help out our forecasters and other users by submitting your observations.  Observations help us fill in the gaps, as we have a lot of terrain to forecast for and limited time and resources to visit all of the forecast zones in NE OR.  Thanks and Happy New Year.

Régions couvertes