Kootenay Boundary

Looks like another dry and relatively cool weekend. Avalanche danger remains low and hopefully the light dusting of snow improves snow quality.

Good - The weather pattern is stable

A ridge of high pressure rebuilds overnight and results in clearing skies and sunny weather for the weekend. The freezing level is near valley bottom on Saturday and up to around 1000 m on Sunday. Winds are light gusting to moderate from the NE-NW. A weak low pressure system could cross the province on Monday bringing light or moderate snowfall, but theres a good deal of uncertainty with this disturbance.

No new avalanches have been reported in the past few days.

A trace of new snow sits on the previous snow surfaces. The most prominent feature in the snowpack is the thick upper crust. This crust is supportive all the way to ridge crest and is effectively "capping" the snowpack, keeping riders from tickling any deeper weak layers. On solar aspects the proud crust is on the surface (softening during sunny days), and on shadier aspects there may be 5 - 20 cm of settled storm snow on it. There are still weak layers in the snowpack that we'll continue to monitor, but for now these layers are dormant. We would likely need significant warming and/or heavy loading to re-activate them.