Gudauri

Riders' weight, rapid warming or a smaller surface avalanche could cause weak layers deep in the snowpack to fail. This could create a very large avalanche event, so keep this in mind when planning your route. Will you be in a place of relative safety if this happens? If not, is that a risk you should you take? Whumphing and cracking are signs you are on unstable snow. Remember that a whumph (snow collapsing under your feet) could even set off this problem from a distance or from a flat area.

Current heatwave leads to a rapid destabilisation of thick layers of snow and loss of their cohesion to the underlying surfaces on solar aspects what is likely to be the case on all elevations as the freezing level will stay high above 3000 m. during the upcoming period. Avalanches of this type, being heavy and destructive, are especially likely to trigger deep weak layers on the neighboring slopes (or step down onto deeper weak layers) as well.

As the sun gets stronger and the air temperature increases, surface snow will become unstable on steeper slopes. Even a small slide could trigger a deeper slab.

Recent avalanches:

• Some very large avalanches failed on buried weak layers around Feb 28th. Lomisa ridge NE 2200m, Milioni valley NW 3000m, Sadzele NE, 3200m, size 3 - 5
• A couple of size 2 windslabs seen 8th March on NE aspects around 3000m, Miketi and Sadzele
• A skier-triggered size 2 persistent slab that failed near the ground was reported on March 2nd - Kobi valley, NW, 2400m.
• Wet loose slides seen 7th and 8th March, size 1 and 2, Lower Kobi and the peak north of Kudebi
• Skier triggered size 2 avalanche in Lomisa area - 1800 m., NE)
• Size 2 windslab avalanches on E and NE aspects

Snowpack: Excessive moisture in the snowpack created by the ongoing heatwave percolates it almost entirely on solar aspects making the snowpack unsupportive and likely to create bigger wet avalanches on steeper slopes. This contributes to the stabilisation of deep persistent weak layers on solar aspeccts but there is still no hard evidence to get rid of that problem entirely - some collapses in the snowpack are still observed on solar aspects. At higher elevations on shaded slopes and in the shaded areas faceted snow is still buried under hard layers of snow created by the stronger winds that followed the last storm in late february - e.g. this was still present on Sadzele S slope at 3000 m. on 10 of March.

Air temps will continue to rise reaching as high as 10C around mid-day on 14-15 of March and staying above 0C even during the night hours at 2000 m. Freezing level will remain above 3300 meters in the upcoming days. Mostly sunny with no significant winds.