Tincan

The extended cold spell has left something to be desired for surface conditions, but it has also allowed the snowpack to adjust to the weak layers that we've been concerned about for the past few weeks. You can never entirely rule out an avalanche across an entire forecast zone, but it is looking very unlikely that a person will be able to trigger one. There is always a chance of finding a lingering pocket of unstable snow, so be sure to follow safe travel protocols and have the necessary gear to manage a situation if something goes wrong.

Surfaces are a challenging and quite variable mix of breakable crusts, very firm and supportable old wind slabs, breakable wind slabs, and some very isolated pockets of soft-ish snow. I pretty much made zig-zags all the way from the top of Common Bowl down to the truck, with the exception of maybe 10 turns that were pretty decent at the bottom of Common.

I dug one pit on a south aspect at just under 3200'. There is a very weak layer of faceted snow just below the surface, but this has been buried for over a week without producing avalanches. It will be something we'll be watching closely once we get more wind or snow, but until then it is looking very unlikely that someone will be able to trigger an avalanche on it.

There is a fresh layer of surface hoar on the surface that is very large at valley bottoms, but quickly decreases in size with elevation. It was about 4-6 mm at 1500' elevation, 2-4 mm at around 2000', and hard to track above that.