East Slopes North

Light snow and wind with slowly cooling temperatures will leave few avalanche concerns for Monday. On the most wind-exposed, highest slopes there's a chance for very shallow new slabs to build, though these will be of little consequence. Continue to limit your exposure to large, overhead cornices.

A weak storm will deliver a small shot of snow into Monday night. Snow accumulations of 2-3" with light wind won't be enough to add new concerns for avalanches. Over the weekend, observers reported lots of snow falling from trees and small wet avalanches on steep, southerly aspects. Even low-elevation northerly slopes warmed enough to form rollerballs. Clouds and cooler temperatures kept wet avalanches to a minimum on Sunday. Significant snowfall and intermittent wind events since late February added about 3ft to the snowpack. The current warming trend is changing the snowpack and has caused over a foot of settlement in less than a week at Washington Pass.

Three very large natural avalanches ran around the 14th above treeline; A D3 on an east aspect in Cutthroat Creek, and two D3s on  Big Kangaroo Peak, one on the northwest aspect and another on the northeast aspect into Willow Creek. These ran beneath large rocky cliffs. The slide in Willow Creek appears to have run down to the ground at a moraine, with a crown easily 3-6ft deep, possibly up to 10ft. 

The Valentine's crust is 3-5 feet below the surface in the western half of the zone, including near Washington Pass, the upper Silverstar drainage, and Hart's Pass. You can expect to find it closer to the surface at lower elevations and further east in the zone. There have been numerous observations and snowpack tests indicating weak snow and poor structure below this crust. It's suspected to have been a weak layer for some of the very large avalanches at the end of the last storm cycle. If you're motivated to dig deep enough, you can probably still find the January 5th surface hoar. We have less of an understanding of the progression of these layers east of Mazama and the Twisp River drainage.