Northwest Mountains

You can find the best conditions and safer terrain options by seeking out soft snow on slopes protected from the prolonged southwest wind event.  Hard and smooth, wind-drifted slabs are common on leeward terrain features at upper elevations and become less common as you descend to lower elevations.  You can reduce the chance of triggering an avalanche by avoiding terrain with signs of recent drifting.  Several cornice falls have triggered large avalanches in recent days so it would be wise to give looming cornices a healthy amount of space.

Strong to extreme winds this past weekend produced a notable loading event on leeward terrain features.  During the wind-induced loading period, several natural and human-triggered avalanches occurred.  Even though strong winds persisted at upper elevations on Monday and linger into today, soft snow in windward areas has largely dried up and prevented further loading from happening.  As time increases from the loading period, the likelihood of triggering a Wind Slab slowly decreases.  On Monday, field reports from the Northwest Mountains(Baldy Mountain) and Southeast Mountains(Star Pass) suggest that drifted slabs from the weekend have become stubborn, or even unreactive, to human triggers.  Even though the likelihood continues to decrease, it would be wise to give drifted terrain a bit more time because the hard Wind Slabs would probably break above you and could be large enough to bury or injure you.

Each loading period over the past month has produced a couple of Persistent Slab avalanches around Crested Butte, typically occurring in the Southeast Mountains.  This past weekend several cornice falls triggered deep-breaking avalanches in the Northwest Mountains (Peeler Basin 1, Peeler Basin 2, Schuylkill Peak).  With very little soft snow in windward areas to fuel cornice growth, natural cornice fall is becoming less of a threat.  It would be prudent to give a wide berth to all cornices if you are traveling above them and to minimize your time below.  The last Persistent Slab avalanches documented in the Southeast Mountains occurred on Wednesday, March 1st near the Friends Hut and Coffee Pot Pass during a stormy period.  Concerns linger for you to trigger a similar avalanche on leeward terrain at upper elevations, particularly where you encounter crusts and facets in the upper snowpack.  Take the time to perform snowpack tests where you find cohesive slabs resting above facets or facet/crust structures in the upper snowpack or a safer option is to favor wind-sheltered slopes where Persistent Slab problems are less likely to be found and the riding conditions are better.