Steady south and southwest winds have created new, and added volume to old wind-drifts, that are found at mid and upper elevations on the north half of the compass. These drifts are 1-3' deep and failing on the light-density snow that fell towards the tail end of the weekend storm. Yesterday, wind slabs failed naturally and were easlily triggered with the additional wieght of a human. Look for drifting in the usual suspect terrain just off ridges and cornices, along with more uncommon places like cross-loaded chutes, gullies and slope convexity's or rollovers. Keep your eyes peeled and avoid any fat, rounded pillow of snow that will be reactive to our additional weight and may pack more of a punch than you might expect.

Several persistent weak layers of snow, now buried a couple feet from the snow surface, are beginning to show signs of maturity. In fact, the last reported persistent slab avalanche occurred last weekend in the high-country and seemed to be a bit of an outlier. As spring settles into place and our mindset on terrain shifts towards stepping onto bigger slopes, the fact is that colder, weak snow lingers in the middle of our snow pack and is hard to detect, but feels solid under our sled and skis. Unless you dig down and check it out, you may never know what it looks like. However, if you do some homework and trench down a bit you'll find weak, faceted snow buried 2' to 4’ deep beneath the snow surface -- The cause and culprit recent persistent slab avalanches.

Although it is mid-March, the snowpack is still quite complex. Persistent slab avalanches like the ones we are dealing with will end your day, or even worse... Let's keep it tight and avoid terrain where we could trigger a slide bigger than we bought into