Persistent Slabs
- Alta quota
- Limite del bosco
- Sotto il limite del bosco
- Probabilità
- Possible
- Dimensione
- 4
Today, we can still trigger a deep, dangerous slide like the one in the image above triggered early this week on the south half of the range.
It's been a great run and we've stacked up an impressive amount of snow in the past two weeks. However, the trifecta of storm snow, water weight, and winds formed a dense, connected slab on the leeward side of mid and upper elevation ridges. Complicating matters is this... all the fresh snow is gonna ride deep and the pre-existing snow surface it fell on is gonna feel strong underneath us. Now here's the problem... we've gotta think not only about the snow we're riding in, but also the snow we're riding on and all of this additional weight is stressing weak layers buried in the snowpack, bringing them back to life... and these layers are WOKE!
Muddying the waters even further is that some slopes have either avalanched, but are now covered over with fresh snow making that trend hard to detect, or they've adjusted to the additional weight and are good to go. The tricky part is that other slopes just wait for us to roll along and knock the legs out from underneath. And here's the danger... once initiated, often low on the slope, avalanches have a distinct possibility of breaking much deeper and wider than you might expect.
With all the great riding right now there's no reason to pull on the dogs tail today. It's a long season and the snow needs time to adjust. Be patient for the next couple of days and simply stay off of and out from under steep wind drifted slopes