February 2, 2007 - 12:08 pm

Today, slopes with recent wind deposits steeper than about 35 degrees
have a MODERATE avalanche danger. If the wind slabs are thicker than
about a foot or if they are hard slabs, you can bump the danger up a
notch. On non-wind affected terrain and on slopes less steep than
about 35 degrees, the avalanche danger is generally LOW but watch for
sluffing of the new snow on steep slopes.

Current Conditions

Our saga of our character-inducing season continues. The good news is
that we got a desperately-needed, freshening-up of 5-7 inches of light
snow, but the bad news is that strong winds came up overnight to ruin
most of it. Winds on most of the ridge tops are blowing from the west
25, gusting to 50 and 40 gusting to 60 on the highest peaks. And it
may be windy, but at least its cold with 5 below zero temperatures on
the highest peaks and 7 degrees at 8,000 where winds are gusting to 20
mph.

Recent Avalanche Activity

No activity was reported from yesterday, although because our server
was down, we have not been receiving e-mails. 

(Avalanche.org was down for several days, not this site.)

Avalanche Concern #1

Its a simple setup. Wind loading is the word for the day. Avoid any
steep slopes with recent deposits of wind drifted snow. Any questions?
Wind deposits look smooth and rounded, while wind eroded snow looks
sand-blasted. The wind slabs will be mostly soft and mostly around a
foot deep, but they could be much deeper in the wind exposed areas.
These wind slabs are sitting on top of very slick, hard crusts in the
wind and sun-exposed areas and they are sitting on top of extremely
weak faceted snow in the wind and sun-sheltered, north facing slopes.
Either way, they will likely be quite sensitive to the weight of a
person.

Mountain Weather

Unfortunately, the ridge top winds will continue to blow 35-40 mph
from the northwest today and most of Saturday and they will finally
calm down on Sunday as a ridge builds into us. We may get a few light
snow showers lingering today. Ridge top temperatures will remain near
zero today but they will warm up to the mid 20s on Saturday and be
near freezing on Sunday.