With strong SW wind and light snow Friday overnight, be on the lookout for thin, fresh windslabs in the alpine.
Challenging travel conditions exist at lower elevations.
Strong winds & light snow are forecasted overnight and into Sat morning. Evaluate terrain carefully for wind slabs that could sweep a rider over cliffs or into terrain traps.
Intense warming happened on Friday. If the snowpack doesn't freeze very well overnight and into Saturday, loose wet avalanches could be of concern.
Few natural avalanches have been observed on the highway corridor over the past 4 days.
Neighboring operations are reporting small wet loose avalanches on solar facing terrain and natural cornice falls.
On Apr 14, a party observed several sz 2 wet/loose avalanches from steep, S-facing terrain on Mt Green.
On Apr 11, a skier triggered sz 2 wind slab on the Dome glacier at 2450 m, NE asp.
Also on Apr 11, a wide-propagating, rider triggered sz 2.5 on Bruins Glacier.
Daily melt/freeze cycles are affecting the surface of the snowpack on solar slopes and all aspects up to 2200m, with several crusts of variable strength in the upper snowpack.
High alpine, north facing slopes still hold dry snow. A spotty, buried surface hoar layer exists down 15-40cm in sheltered north alpine areas above ~2300m. This layer has been reactive to human triggering in the past week.
Below treeline, conditions are variable and challenging travel exists.
Saturday a cold front ushers in bringing flurries/showers and unsettled conditions into Sun/Mon.
Tonight Cloudy. 7cm. Alp low -2°C. Ridge wind NW 25-50 km/h. Freezing Level (FZL) 1800m
Sat Sun & cloud. Trace precip. Alp high -2°C. SW wind 20-40 km/h. FZL 1900m
Sun Scattered flurries. 5cm. Alp high -4°C. West wind 10-30km/hr. FZL 1800m
Mon Flurries. Trace precip. Alp high -1°C. West wind 20-35km/hr. FZL 1900m.
