Northwest Mountains

Take advantage of our unusually safe avalanche conditions before we get back into the storm track.  Consider the threat of small sluffs and rare lingering wind-drifted slabs before riding in consequential avalanche terrain.

In yesterday's discussion, we took a zoomed-in look at local weather and avalanche activity patterns.  Today, let's zoom out to a regional scale.  The Mountain West has suffered through similar patterns: early season weak layers, persistent slab development with December storms, and most recently, unusually dry weather to close out December.  Our surrounding avalanche centers in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana all have Low danger and are dealing with similar issues: the low likelihood threat of an old slab breaking in wind-drifted terrain, along with sluffing in the rotting snowpack.  There have only been a few slab avalanches reported around this entire Rocky Mountain Region in the past week, which highlights the low likelihood situation for triggering a slab avalanche right now.   Furthermore, the most recent slab avalanches look fairly similar in the terrain characteristics: heavily wind drifted, dense slabs (ex. Colorado, ex. Utah, ex. Wyoming).  The more common instability has been loose dry avalanches, which is symptomatic of our weakening and faceting snowpack.  In some parts of the West, facet sluffs are entraining the entire snowpack (ex. Aspen), and at least one person has been caught off guard by a deep gouger in Utah.  Fortunately, we haven't found that to be the issue here yet, but it's something we are monitoring for (Ex. Elk Creek, Ex. Happy Chutes).     

In the next week, the Mountain West will be coming off of a prolonged dry spell and enter back into the storm track.  This is often a recipe for accidents: powder-starved backcountry travelers interacting with loading onto the challenging persistent weak layer issues that develop from droughts.  Snowfall in the next few days looks to be fairly minor so I'm not expecting any significant changes in the short term.  With the storm track expected to return to the region by Sunday and into next week, conditions will be changing soon enough, so take advantage of the green light while we have it.  We may not see it again until spring.