Northwest Mountains

Avalanche hazards are generally small and isolated across the landscape.  A small chance lingers for you to trigger an avalanche on previously drifted features and in extreme terrain.  You can manage the problem by identifying smooth, drifted features at upper elevations and simply steering around them.   Warm temperatures and sunshine today may wet snow surfaces on sunny slopes creating a small, wet loose hazard.

In the Northwest Mountains, the avalanche danger is LOW.  However, a windy period from this past week formed wind drifts at upper elevations that produced human-triggered avalanches on Friday.  There could be isolated drifts from that northerly wind event where you might be able to trigger an avalanche.  If you venture into drifted slopes, consider the consequences of taking a ride in a small avalanche.  Small avalanches can be dangerous above cliffs and terrain traps.  Warming temperatures and sunshine may soften surfaces on sunny slopes depending on cloud cover today.  Monitor surface wetness and if you find more than a few inches of wet surface snow then Wet Loose avalanches are possible, but should remain small and only pose a threat if you are above terrain traps.

The avalanche danger remains MODERATE near and above treeline in the Southeast Mountains due to the risk of triggering a large avalanche on old weak layers deep in the snowpack.  Last week's wind event produced a notable natural avalanche near Hunter Hill that broke near the ground and a snowmobile-triggered avalanche in the same area a day later.  The most concerning terrain is at upper elevations where recent drifting has occurred and on slopes with highly variable snow depths.  Signs of instability like collapsing are unlikely until you find a trigger point and release a dangerous avalanche.  Below treeline slopes have the same poor-looking structure but appear to be unreactive to human triggers hence the LOW danger rating (poor structure on Cement Mountain, poor structure out West Brush Creek).  Even without signs of instability on sheltered terrain below treeline in the Southeast Mountains, the poor structure nudges one to follow standard backcountry protocol like only exposing one person at a time to a given slope and avoiding travel above terrain traps just in case the poor structure decides to surprise you.