Turnagain Pass Avalanche Forecast

In the Turnagain pass zone yesterday my partner and I found shallow soft wind slabs (6-10” deep) that were easy to trigger in terrain greater than ~38 degrees.  This problem was shown to be quite manageable yesterday as these slabs were all small and relatively predictable.  Today is going to be an entirely different ball game as SE winds and new snow will build these slabs to ‘unmanageable’.  Slabs are sitting on a variety of crusts and stiff wind board on south, east and west aspects; all exhibit attributes of a slick bed surfaces.  To top it off, there do still exist pockets of facets acting as a weak layer from our prolonged mid-March sunny spell.  It’ll be wise to pay particular attention to leeward facing slopes and cross-loaded gullies, as this is where you’ll find deeper, wind loaded pockets ripe for a trigger today.  Pay attention to indicator slopes and/ or try and test the snow on smaller test slopes prior to committing to bigger or steeper terrain.

                              Shallow, easily triggerable wind slab yesterday.

With plenty of snow available for transport, moderate winds today and increasing temperatures on the horizon I think cornices warrant a brief discussion.  It’s been several weeks since we’ve seen a cornice fall so what this tells me is that they are continuing to grow and ripen as we near April 1st.  Cornices are nearly impossible to forecast for so what we can do is mitigate this hazard by reducing time spent below a cornices and travel well back from the roof of a cornice.  There are some enormous cornices in the backcountry right now and inevitably many of them will fail in the last month or so of our season.  Play it safe and avoid these backcountry bombs!