East Slopes Central

While there is a low likelihood of triggering an avalanche, always monitor your surroundings for signs of instability, such as shooting cracks. Exercise caution in very steep alpine terrain where small, isolated pockets of unstable wind-drifted snow may exist. You should also expect challenging travel on various slick crusts and wind-stiffened snow. 

There is little snow left to transport onto lee aspects, and recently formed wind slabs are likely gaining strength and will be difficult to trigger. However, where these slabs formed over slick crusts in alpine terrain, you could find a rogue wind slab and trigger an avalanche. Any avalanches would likely be small and isolated to steep terrain features at high elevations, but even small avalanches could have high consequences in extreme terrain. Observe how wind-drifted snow reacts before committing to steep consequential slopes. Temperatures will notch up a bit again on Wednesday. Cloud cover should mostly keep any wet loose avalanche activity minimal, but if the sun does poke out, look for rollerballs or pinwheels to indicate wet loose avalanches are possible. The last significant storm in the East Central area was over MLK weekend. This warm storm buried the 1/4 layer of surface hoar and created a now easily identifiable melt-freeze crust in the snowpack. While we are still tracking the 1/4 surface hoar layer, it is unlikely you could trigger an avalanche on this layer beneath the MLK crust. However, in the Blewett Pass area on Tuesday, Josh Hirshberg and I observed a snowpack test result showing potential for propagation on this layer. So there is a chance that a potent storm could reawaken this layer. In January, a series of small storms buried The MLK crust 1-2 feet deep in most locations. This snow above the MLK crust is weakening, and a thin layer of faceted snow now exists just above the MLK crust. So far, it has not proved reactive, but that could change with additional loading events. We have also had relatively windy conditions, and observations from higher-elevation exposed terrain indicate stiff wind-affected surfaces on most aspects. The sun has also been a strong player for the last few days, and thick, icy crusts now exist on southern aspects. All these variable and potentially icy surfaces now have just a few inches of snow on top. So you can expect challenging travel conditions out there, consider bringing appropriate equipment to travel safely on steep icy terrain.