Blues

The avalanche danger remains low in our area mountains. Normal springtime travel precautions should be taken. Avoid steep south-facing terrain in the afternoon and stay far back from cornice edges. A fall on a steep slope containing firm snow could end up turning into a fast, uncontrollable, and consequential slide.

On a side note - this is our last scheduled advisory of the season.

Forecast presented by @onxbackcountry. onX Backcountry is a GPS navigation and mapping tool designed with your backcountry objectives in mind, equipped with Avalanche Forecast and Slope Angle layers, Offline Maps and more.

Temperatures will remain pretty mild in the Blues today. The high is forecast to be 47 degrees. Overnight, the Blue Mountains only experienced a slight dip in temperatures below freezing. This likely kept the snowpack from refreezing and will allow the warm temperatures today to soften the snowpack rapidly.

The lack of a significant refreeze last night means the snow surface will be soft and in some places may be unsupportable. If you find when you step off your sled or skis you are sinking in around your boot tops this should have you avoiding slopes > 35 degrees. This means getting off and out from under steep slopes in the afternoon (especially south-facing slopes if the sun pokes out) and giving overhanging cornice edges wide berth. The relatively warm springtime temperatures can weaken cornices, causing them to fail with the added extra weight of a human. Keep in mind that cornices tend to break further back from slope edges than you might think.

This is our last scheduled advisory of the season. We will continue to offer periodic updates as conditions warrant. Please, check the weather and observation pages regularly if you continue to recreate in the mountains this spring. Potent storm systems, much like the one coming in later today, are still a possibility and the avalanche danger can spike precipitously with these events. Also, watch temperatures closely. If mountain locations do not get a hard freeze - low temps in the mid to upper 20's overnight - for several nights in a row, this will likely create unstable conditions and spike the avalanche danger. Again, if you witness roller ball activity, see wet sluffs on steeper slopes, or sink in above your boot tops when you step off your sled or skis, you should think about moving to lower angle terrain and staying out from underneath steep slopes.