A bit of snow has helped the skiing but its still pretty thin in alot of areas. When the winds increase, watch for windslabs to build quickly.
Expect new windslabs in immediate lee areas. These soft slabs are subtle, difficult to detect and easy to underestimate. Caution in unsupported terrain.
If triggered, surface wind slabs may step down and involve this layer. Avalanche sizes could be surprisingly large if this happens.
A few loose dry avalanches up to sz 1 were observed throughout the day from steep unskiable terrain.
20-30cm of low density snow can be found at treeline that is overlying a variety of previous snow surfaces from facetted snow to windslabs. The upper snowpack has generally been unaffected by winds except in specific areas such as ridgelines and cols.
Buried windslabs exist down 20-50cm in the snowpack but field observations have shown that these slabs are stubborn to trigger.
The weak basal facets are still a concern and have a potential to be triggered from thin snowpack areas which are still plentiful at this time. Stability has been improving but we are still avoiding steep thin features where triggering this weakness is still a possibility.
See the attached photo of the Burstall Pass profile site.
See table.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
