Turnagain Pass

As our extended period of clear weather continues, we are sitting in the “normal caution” phase of avalanche issues. These include:

1- Sluffs on steep slopes. These have been small to medium in volume, but are getting larger by the day as the surface becomes weaker under clear skies.

2- Triggering an outlier avalanche. This would most likely be an ‘unsupported slab’ that sits above a cliff or steep rocky terrain. Check out video HERE for an example.

3- Triggering a cornice fall. The cornices maybe be small(ish) right now, but they are clearly large enough to take you down somewhere you don’t want to go. As always, give them a wide berth.

Photo: You can see the boot pack to the top of Tincan Proper steers clear of the cornices, however it looks as if someone may have triggered a piece of cornice recently from the boot pack, or possibly veering off of it. A good reminder for us to err of the side of caution when traveling near cornices.

Below is a glimpse of the high elevation snowpack (3,700′). We are finding the old faceted snow from the mid-November cold snap being compressed below roughly 1-3′ of dense and hard Thanksgiving snow. Other than Graham’s pit on Friday, we have seen no reactivity in these old facetd. This includes both snowpack stability tests as well as a large number of folks testing the slopes in the region.

“No results” mentioned in pit = a stabilized snowpack.

As we may be approaching the end of our clear spell, we are watching for the next possible weak layer(s) develop – the surface. Check out the recent reports for more on this HERE.