Continue to practice your safe backcountry travel habits even when the hazard is low. Small avalanches can have large consequences in the wrong terrain!
Recent new snow and moderate winds built fresh windslabs in lee terrain features. Winds shifted to NE'ly and will be reverse-loading Alpine slopes. Windslabs may overlie a crust on steep solar aspects, and dry settled snow on N aspects.
Cornices are LARGE this time of year, and becoming brittle with cold temperatures. There has been no new cornice activity reported within the park; however, our near neighbors have started to see natural and skier-triggered cornice activity recently!
Cool temps with freezing levels at valley bottom, a mix of sun, cloud, and Easterly winds for a few days.
Tonight: Mainly clear, Alp low -18*C, light to Mod winds from the East.
Wed: Mix of sun and cloud, Alp High -11*C, light winds from the East
Thursday: Mix of sun/cloud, Alp low -15*C/high -9*C, light winds from the East
Widespread wind effect in the Alpine and upper treeline has left behind wind slabs on specific terrain features, and stripped the new snow away in others; however, there are still reports of decent conditions in the Alpine in sheltered zones. At Treeline and below the spring snowpack currently has a solid supportive melt-freeze crust.
No new avalanches have been observed in the HWY corridor in the last few days. A close call occurred on Monday, where a small pocket of wind slab nearly took a skier into a crevasse! Click on the link here for the full report. Lingering cornices are starting to fail in the Alpine, with one triggering a deep persistent weak layer to the NW of GNP.
