Southeast Mountains

Recent mild weather has lead to a brief decrease in avalanche activity. Fewer obvious signs of instability have also arrived, those collapses and shooting cracks work well to grab your attention and remind you of potentially dangerous conditions. Without those warning signs, it is important to remember that large slab avalanches remain possible to human trigger. These slabs would break 1 to 2 feet deep on old faceted snow, and be large enough to bury or kill a human. Continue to evaluate the snow and your terrain choices carefully today. Last night's 1 to 3" of new snow will bring a welcome little change to the old snow surfaces. 

The avalanche danger has been rated CONSIDERABLE for the last 14 days! That is an impressive stretch. During that time there were hundreds of both human triggered and natural avalanches, accidents, and the loss of an beloved community member. The avalanche danger has now briefly dropped one danger rating. There was little warning that the danger would be dropped, as forecaster confidence needed to become high before this change was willing to be made, after such an eventful past two weeks. 

The current snowpack is built upon a layer of facets that was buried 12/10. This particular weak layer has been quoted as "one of the worst since 2012". When these facets were buried, they were widespread on west, to north, to east aspects, and some upper elevation southeasterly facing slopes. This weak layer has seen little improvement over the last couple of weeks. Just scroll through the observations page and you will see lots of natural and human triggered avalanches. What has changed in the last several days, is the distribution of snow and slabs over this weak layer. The redistribution of this snow came from an extreme wind event on 12/23, with westerly winds, followed by continued strong winds from the northwest to north. These winds removed snow from some slopes and created hard slabs on others.

West to northwest facing slopes saw the most snow get stripped away. These slopes have now been removed from the persistent slab avalanche distribution rose, as an avalanche on these aspects will be less likely to be triggered than on other aspects. Northeasterly and easterly facing slopes at mid and upper elevations saw the most loading and building of the slab. Many of those slabs are now very hard, and it has become more difficult for the weight of a human to affect the weak layer below. However human triggering one of those hard slabs would make for a nasty avalanche. Near treeline elevations may now be the most suspect for human triggering. Here the slabs will be larger than down at lower elevations, but the slabs will not be as hard as upper elevations. 

Following this wind event came mild weather on 12/25 and 12/26. The work of those winds and recent mild weather has left the primary avalanche problem more specifically located in the terrain and stubborn to trigger, landing us at a MODERATE avalanche danger rating. This drop in the danger rating will be brief, as the next storm may be pushing the danger back to CONSIDERABLE by tomorrow. Stay tuned to the avalanche forecast as we keep an eye on how the incoming storm develops.