Keep your guard up in steep open terrain! Wind slabs are bonding poorly to underlying layers.
Outflow wind has impacted open terrain on various aspects, and formed wind slabs that are bonding poorly to the underlying surface hoar and/or crust layers.
There has been a steady stream of small (size 1 to 1.5) wind slab avalanches observed over the past few days. Natural avalanches were triggered by outflow winds, while human-triggered avalanches have occurred on a range of aspects. Most slabs were 20 to 30 cm thick, with some failing on a buried surface hoar layer.
Sun and wind are creating variable surface conditions. Exposed terrain is being scoured by northeast wind and forming small wind slabs on south and west facing slopes.
Roughly 30 cm of snow sits above large surface hoar and/or faceted crystals at treeline and above. A widespread, supportive crust exists 30 to 40 cm below the surface.
The snowpack is strong and bonded below this crust.
Thursday Night
Clear skies. 30 km/h east ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -7 °C.
Friday
Sunny. 30 km/h southeast ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -3 °C.
Saturday
Mostly cloudy. 30 km/h southeast ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -2 °C with freezing level around 1200 m.
Sunday
Cloudy with 1 to 2 cm of snow. 15 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -2 °C with freezing level around 1200 m.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
