The Whitepass is sketchy right now

<p>We spent the whole day in the Whitepass yesterday and it is sketchy as all hell. The short of it is this: the riding is mostly dust on crust, failures are occurring on a hair trigger on all aspects, and those failures can be set off remotely from pretty damn far away. We experienced three huge 'whumphs' and remotely triggered an avalanche on an adjacent ridge in pretty chill terrain. You can have some fun in the trees, but your calls have to be ultra conservative. Right now the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze. We started the day on some mellow terrain just a little ways over the border, about a kilometer down the road from the Feather pullout toward Skagway. It's a little, chill spot with very little overhead exposure we often session when things are sketchy. We triggered a pretty large avalanche on an adjacent ridge in pretty mellow terrain. The crown was about 3 - 3 1/2 feet high (use the little trees for scale in the attached pic). It scared the shit out of us. We got out of there and headed to an even chiller area with dense trees, no overhead exposure, and very little elevation. While surveying the area from the road, we saw a couple more natural avalanches on different aspects that appear to have failed on the same layer. Big crowns and big, dense slabs on mellow slopes. The same failure on a larger slope would absolutely rock you. Scary stuff. In the second area we triggered another large whumpf while climbing a really small, chill ridge in dense trees. In that case the slope was well anchored, so it just dropped a cm or less straight down and didn't slide, but the area was really large. I'd say the fracture lines ran 70 or 80 feet. It sounded and felt just like the other two failures, so I think it was failing on the same layer. We got to a nice safe zone and had a super fun day sessioning a big kicker we built, but, for the most part, the conditions right now are garbage. Depending on where you go there's crust or dust on crust, with pockets of decent snow in the trees. Honestly, the risks outweigh the payout right now. Until we get a good reset and the avy risk levels out a bit, you may be better off riding Sima. </p>

Terrain Ridden

Mellow slopes, Dense trees, Open trees.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes, Convex slopes, Steep slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Hard, Wind affected.

Weather Conditions

Warm.