Turnagain Pass Avalanche Forecast

It looks as though winter is back. We have a cold storm moving in this morning that will bring another round of snow all the way down to sea level. Snowfall is just getting going now and is expected to drop ~6″ on the Pass during the day with possibly up to 10″ in favored locations. Winds associated are not too exciting – light from the east with moderate gusts. That said, new snow with some wind will spice up the avalanche conditions. Snow amounts are modest however, so most of the avalanche activity should be low volume – the exception will be areas the wind is depositing snow into deeper drifts and slabs.

There are three main questions to keep in mind if heading out today:
1- How much snow is accumulating in the area you are traveling? The more snow, the bigger the avalanche.
2- Is the wind blowing and loading slopes? Only 6″ of new snow with moderate wind can build sensitive wind slabs over a foot deep (see yesterday’s activity below). These could quickly through you down a slope and into an unmanageable situation.
3- How well is the new snow bonding with the variety of underlying surfaces? Slick crusts on southerly aspects will have a hard time holding snow. Northerly aspects have a mix of soft snow, wind affected surfaces and potentially buried surface hoar. I’m expecting bonding on northerlies to be poor in some areas and fairly good in others.

Other than wind slabs mentioned above, we can expect loose snow avalanches in steep terrain to release both naturally or by a person. Also, shallow storm slab avalanches on slopes greater than 35 degrees are possible due to warming temperatures during snowfall.

Yesterday’s avalanche activity:
Folks were able to find and trigger fresh wind slabs 6-12″ deep yesterday on upper elevation northerly slopes. This seemed to be confined to the southern end of the Pass where 4-8″ of low density snow fell Saturday evening (only 2-4″ fell on the northern side of the Pass). Southerly winds blew during the snowfall and then kicked up again mid-day yesterday continuing to load northerly slopes. We saw a few natural loose snow avalanches in the Lynx Creek area as well – see Fitz’s video HERE.