Great skiing can still be found on shaded slopes.
Expect a surface crust on solar aspects in the morning, and scale back your exposure as this switches from crusty to moist/wet in the afternoon.
The recent snow from Monday (March 11th) is sitting over a crust/surface hoar combination in some locations. This layer has been reactive in tests and to skier traffic and will become easier to trigger on solar slopes as they warm up.
As the sun heats up solar slopes expect the surface snow to loose stability and trigger easily in steep terrain.
On Friday, we observed a few loose snow avalanches on steep solar aspects in the Highway corridor, up to size 2.5.
There was a widespread cycle of avalanche activity on steep solar aspects on Thursday. These were primarily loose snow avalanches in the size 1-2 range, with a few larger (size 3) avalanches in the steep paths off of Mt. Tupper. There was also skier triggered size 1.5 slab avalanche reported in 8812 bowl. All activity was suspected to be failing on the March 11th crust.
Field teams were able to ski cut size 1-1.5 slabs on small steep unsupported solar features (buried crust) on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Up to 40cm of recent snow is settling over a variety of old surfaces (sun crust, surface hoar and soft facetted snow). This storm snow will take longer to bond where it sits on a crust/surface hoar combo.
Below this is a generally strong snowpack, however the basal weakness of rounding facets/decomposing crust persists near the ground and should factor in to your terrain use decisions.
High pressure will maintain stable weather through the weekend.
Tonight: Clear periods. Alpine low -6°C. Light Southwest ridgetop winds.
Saturday: Mix of sun and cloud. Alpine High -5°C, freezing level (FZL) 1500m. Light S ridgetop winds.
Sunday: Sunny periods. Low -7°C, High -2°C, FZL 1800m. Light SE winds.
Monday: Mainly cloudy. Low -5°C, High -1°C, FZL 1800m. Light wind.
