Stevens Pass

Avalanche danger is generally low. If the sun is more intense and temperatures are higher than anticipated, there could be shedding blocks of snow or small wet avalanches. Travel on the southern half of the compass, and most areas below about 5500ft have crusty, challenging snow surfaces to navigate over. 

We don't expect you to be able to trigger an avalanche on Wednesday. However, if the sun is more intense and the snow gets wetter than expected, there's a chance that small wet loose avalanches may occur on steep, sunny slopes. Any precariously perched blocks of snow that are melting in warmer temperatures may shed as well. We expected to see wind transport on Tuesday but none was detected. Winds will shift from east to west for Wednesday, and if you see any drifting snow, there's a small chance that shallow upper elevation wind slabs may develop. 

Your main concern on Wednesday is challenging travel conditions. Below 5300ft on all aspects, a surface crust exists. This crust is breakable or solid depending on where you go, making for challenging travel no matter which form of transport you choose to use on Wednesday. When you go a few hundred feet lower in elevation, you'll start finding runnels, and more textured surfaces. There's also an abundance of tree bomb holes adding to the assortment of variable surfaces for Wednesday. Snow is at least still soft and dry on upper elevation shady slopes.

I traveled out to Big Chief Ridge on Tuesday. I searched for weaknesses 1-2ft down at recent new/old snow interfaces. I was still able to get failures at the interfaces, mainly around 1ft deep, but they were very resistant and there were no propagations in tests. Increasing cloud cover kept temperatures feeling chilly and snow didn't get wet. I saw wet loose avalanche from the previous 2 days, but there weren't any happening on Tuesday. Snow surfaces, rather than avalanches, were my major concern. That breakable crust made skiing a challenge, and I took the most conservative line I could to retreat back to safety. We received a similar observation from Jim Hill on Monday (OBSERVATION), although at that time wet loose activity was rampant. 

We're expected to get less than an inch of snow or light rain for Wednesday, and freezing levels will be 4000-5000ft. We may get a bit more sun than we saw on Tuesday. We don't expect these factors to change the avalanche conditions much from how they were on Tuesday. If anything, some lower elevation and south facing crusts might soften a little.