It seems we are on the doorstep for clearing skies and a break in the past 15 days of stormy weather. If we don’t see the sun this afternoon we should by tomorrow morning. The good visibility should allow for travel out of the trees and into an enticing couple feet of fresh powder, which brings us to our primary concern – triggering a deep and dangerous slab avalanche.
To recap, we have had 122+” of snow fall in just over two weeks on very weak faceted snow formed in October and November. Large natural avalanches have been widespread along with one human triggered avalanche during these two weeks – all failing in the weak early season snow. Two deep slabs were pulled out yesterday with explosives and the low visibility kept any information hidden as to larger avalanches triggered by the 2-3’ of load added the past two days. The weak layer is now 4-8+’ deep and rarely giving us clues as to its instability – until it fails catastrophically. There is a lot of uncertainty as to how hard these deep slabs are to trigger at this point and we have very little information from above treeline. That said, these are potentially unsurvivable slides and warrant respect.
As we go into this clear period we cannot forget about this deeper weakness. Keeping terrain choices conservative, steering clear of large open committing slopes and slopes steeper than 35 degrees is recommended. Watching for and avoiding trigger points is also key – check out John’s great write up on that HERE. It is very easy to focus on the light powder, new wind slabs and forget about the dragon lurking below. This snowpack deserves patience.
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