Choose mellow slopes and give the new snow time to stabilise. Look above you for steep terrain! Natural avalanches may run into flat areas below large features.
Happy holidays!
Snowfall and strong southerly winds continue to form reactive slabs. Be especially cautious around wind loaded features where storm slabs may be more cohesive and reactive to human-triggering.
Over the weekend, a few natural wind and storm slab avalanches were observed, size 1 to 2.5, on north and west aspects. Also, explosive avalanche control north of Stewart produced a few large avalanches within the storm snow.
If you head into the backcountry please consider submitting your observations to the Mountain Information Network.
Storm snow keeps piling up, with generally strong southerly winds building wind slabs in exposed leeward terrain. South facing slopes (windward), have likely been scoured by the strong winds or have dense, wind packed snow. At low elevations, storm snow overlies a surface crust from warm temperatures and rain.
A spotty layer of surface hoar can be found down 100 cm or more in sheltered terrain features at and below treeline. The distribution of this layer is not well known, and it may be getting too deep to be triggered by the weight of a human.
A layer of facets buried at the end of November can be found near the ground. The snowpack depth varies between 200 and 300 cm at treeline.
Monday Night
Cloudy. 15 to 25 cm of snow expected. Strong southeast ridgetop wind. Freezing level at valley bottom. Treeline temperature around -5 °C.
Tuesday
Cloudy. 5-10 cm of snow expected. Moderate southwest ridgetop wind. Freezing level rises to 600 m. Treeline temperature around -3 °C.
Wednesday
Mainly cloudy. 5 to 10 cm of snow expected. Strong southeast ridgetop wind. Freezing levels drop to valley bottom, treeline temperatures around -7 °C.
Thursday
Mainly cloudy. 10-25 cm of snow expected Southeast winds, 40-60 km/h. Freezing levels rises to 750 m. Treeline temperatures around -3 °C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
