Turnagain Pass Avalanche Forecast

Wind slab avalanches will be our primary concern today as ridgetop winds have increased overnight. These are blowing steady at 15-20mph from the east and should continue through the day. Though the wind did kick up two nights ago creating shallow slabs and wind crusts, there still remains plenty of loose snow on the surface to be blown into new slabs and drifts today. Watching for winds actively loading slopes along with stiff and hollow feeling snow that may crack around you will be your best clues to avoid triggering a wind slab.

Additional Concerns:

Cornices – Cornices have grown steadily the past few storms and though several have fallen many are still looming. Avoiding these from both above and below will be prudent.

Loose snow avalanches – Sluffs should be fairly easy to initiate on steeper slopes sheltered from the wind again today. Scattered wind crusts and southerly aspects that may have a thin sun crust should help to limit sluffs.

Recent avalanche activity:
Yesterday’s sunny Saturday was not missed by many. Several folks were out enjoying the powder with human triggered avalanche activity confined to shallow (4-8″) wind slabs and loose snow sluffing. Natural activity came in the form of cornice falls and sun induced point releases on southerly aspects. There was one very large cornice that fell midday yesterday onto the south face of Magnum Ridge (image below). This backcountry bomb did trigger a few slabs on the way down that look to be mainly in the recent 3′ of storm snow. Right under the cornice it was scoured to the rocks and may have pulled out a couple pockets of snow breaking near the ground. More footage of this can be found HERE.

There exist a few layers of concern buried several feet below the surface that we continue to mention. The first one involves various facet/crust combinations below 3,000’. We have not seen any avalanche activity on these layers in the Turnagain Pass region but they are suspect in the Placer Valley, 20-Mile, Grandview and Summit Lake areas (below 3,000’). The second layer of concern deals with weak snow near the ground in areas with a shallow snow cover. This problem is mainly confined to the mountains of the interior Kenai. Triggering an avalanche that breaks at one of these buried weaknesses is more of an outlier event but could be quite large. Safe travel practices, including limiting exposure time in avalanche paths and runnout zones, is a good way maximize a safe day playing in the backcountry.