Use caution when entering exposed terrain where there could be new or building wind slabs.
Strong to extreme winds near the icefields are building wind slabs with the recent snow. Watch for wind slab development on top of the Jan 27th melt freeze crust.
The bottom of the snow pack is inherently weak with well developed Facets and Depth Hoar. Avalanches initiating in the upper snowpack are likely to step down to this layer and gain significant mass.
Incremental loading over the previous three days bringing around 6cm of new snow. Near the Columbia Icefields strong winds are creating wind slab in the alpine and into exposed tree line. A thin melt freeze crust down 25cm is showing results in snow pit tests below this layer on facets. Generally, the bottom of the snowpack is weak facets and depth hoar. The snowpack ranges from 50 to 120cm.
One skier triggered size 1 avalanche occurred in the Buck Lake area on Jan 31st.
Don't forget to post avalanche observations to the MIN.
Thursday
Cloudy with sunny periods and isolated flurries.
Precipitation: Trace.
Alpine temperature: High -8 °C.
Ridge wind southwest: 20-40 km/h.
Freezing level at valley bottom.
Friday
Cloudy with sunny periods.
Precipitation: Nil.
Alpine temperature: Low -11 °C, High -7 °C.
Ridge wind southwest: 20 km/h gusting to 45 km/h.
Freezing level at valley bottom.
Detailed weather forecasts from Avalanche Canada: https://avalanche.ca/weather/forecast
