East Slopes Central

Access to the mountains is difficult due to flooding, erosion, and downed trees, leading to subsequent road closures. Wet snow hazard is a concern where continuous snow coverage up high exists and where pockets of snow loiter overhead. Be aware of your surroundings and don't linger in wet, unsupportable snow or underneath steep features that could shed wet snow. 

After a double whammy of historic atmospheric river events, the zone has suffered significant snow loss, and it feels a bit trivial to talk about backcountry avalanche danger given the infrastructure damage our communities face. Access is now a major hurdle; it's unlikely any forest road is open and safe to drive on. What little backcountry information we do have shows continuous snow starting mostly above 6000 ft. Should you choose to embark on a journey to the backcountry and manage to get into terrain with enough snow to recreate on, consider the following:

• Wet avalanches remain a concern. The already saturated snowpack will see the sun on Saturday. Consider any combination of wet loose, wet slab, cornice fall, and even small glide avalanches where smooth rock slabs exist beneath the shallow snowpack. Be very cognizant of sagging cornices and other overhead hazards; even a small glob of wet, heavy snow falling down from above could cause bodily harm.
• Exposed hazards abound. Watch for shallowly buried rocks, trees, and high-flowing creeks. Recognize that even small slides can have big consequences when the snowpack is so thin.
• Be flexible, observant, and patient as you travel around. There is as little information as there is snow in the zone, so now is not the time to get after big objectives.

Terrain further north in the zone may be holding onto snow a bit better, but we don't really know. If you plan to try accessing such areas, take a look at the East North zone forecast before heading out. Although access is similarly beyond reach, the snowpack is considerably different up there. The zone actually gained quite a bit of snow instead of losing it this week.

With the warm start to the 25-26 winter season, we have less snowpack information than usual to start daily forecast operations. For zones and elevation bands with less snow than needed for avalanche hazard, we will issue a forecast with No Rating. Anticipated avalanche and weather conditions will still be updated daily. NWAC will issue an avalanche danger rating for a zone when enough snow to produce avalanches has accumulated at middle and upper elevations.