The strong March sun will the increase the likelihood of triggering slabs on sunny aspects, pay attention to changes in surface snow stability between shaded and sunny slopes.
The recent snow from Monday is sitting over a crust or surface hoar and in some locations a combination of the two. This combo is ideal for wide propagation and could produce large avalanches. This layer has been reactive in tests and to skier traffic and will become easier to trigger on solar slopes as they warm up.
As the sun heats up solar slopes expect the surface snow to loose stability and trigger easily in steep terrain.
The deep persistent weak layer will require a large trigger to fail, a storm slab avalanche in motion could be enough to do this. An avalanche on this layer would be very destructive, likely run full path or further, and be of high consequence.
Natural avalanche activity has subsided since Monday's storm however, human triggering remains possible and the likelihood will increase as the sun warms the snow surface. A field team was able to ski cut size 1 slabs on small unsupported features on Wednesday.
Up to 40cm of recent snow is now settling over a variety of old surfaces (wind affect, sun crust and/or surface hoar) and will take longer to bond where it sits on a crust/surface hoar. Below this is a generally strong snowpack however the basal weakness of rounding facets/decomposing crust persists near the ground and should not be left out of your decision making.
Building high pressure will maintain calm weather through the remainder of this week with light winds and no significant precipitation.
Thurs: mix of sun and cloud, no precipitation, Alp high -8*C, light east winds, FZL 1300m
Fri: mix of sun and cloud, no precipitation, Alp high -5*C, light south winds, FZL 1600m
Sat: mix of sun and cloud, no precipitation, Alp high -4*C, light south winds, FZL 1800m
