It was a quiet day in backcountry yesterday. Spring break is over and it seems many folks are tuckered out from significant time spent enjoying the past several days of good snow and sunny skies. The plethora of tracks that litter the landscape tell this tale and we are becoming in need of a refresher – possibly this weekend. The clear and cold weather is recycling our powder however and helping out our riding and skiing conditions.
We just received two observations from Saturday worth mentioning. One is a skier triggered slab. This was fairly small but it’s suspect that buried surface hoar was the culprit. The other was a large natural avalanche in the Portage area. This natural seems to be an outlier event in very complex and steep terrain. Thank you to all who have submitted observations this year. Keep them coming. They are invaluable to us!
As Fitz mentioned yesterday, LOW danger doesn’t mean NO danger and below are good things to keep in mind if getting out in the backcountry today:
Loose snow:
Wet loose avalanches will be possible on southerly aspects as the surfaces warms through the day. These can become more worrisome in steep sustained terrain where a small point release can entrain large enough amounts of heavy snow to push a person around. Additionally, dry snow sluffing on steep (40+ degrees) northerly shaded aspects can be expected. These dry sluffs continue to be low volume and manageable.
Cornice fall:
Despite the abundance of large and overhanging cornices in the region, we have not heard of or seen any recent failures in the past several days. However, the unpredictable and high consequence nature of these keeps them blinking on the radar. They are predominantly on south and southwest aspects and time spent underneath them should as limited as possible.
Old Wind slab:
There are many old wind slabs scattered about and a few of these may be sitting on buried surface hoar or developing facets below. There is a chance a person could find and trigger one of these older slabs in isolated areas. This occurred on Saturday to a party who triggered a slab on a SW facing slope in the Turnagain area, mentioned above.
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