Kananaskis

Ski quality is less than amazing, but travel is improving. Buried crusts are keeping the travel reasonable, with decent, but limited skiing at higher elevations. It's tempting to step out, but avoid bigger terrain in the alpine until we get more snow.

Nothing seen today.

Flurries today have freshened up the look of our snowpack. The gravel slopes from past wind events are covered with a few centimeters of snow. Up to treeline, expect to encounter a rain crust down 20-30cm that formed in an early December storm. So far failures on this crust have been few, but as it develops we expect this layer to become a common bed surface for avalanches. A surface hoar layer is also found up to treeline beneath this crust that was producing moderate results in snowpack tests. Deeper in the snowpack a weak basal layer persists that was a thin melt freeze crust in some areas, or just weak basal facets and depth hoar. Thin areas are still common places to trigger these windslabs which are likely to propagate across a feature so keep this in mind as you travel.

A few centimeters fell today with a few more on the way tonight. This will sort of help the situation, but lets face it, we need more than 8cm to keep this ship afloat. Ridge winds will be moderate from the west, increasing as we approach the week end. Temperatures tomorrow will be -10 to -8C. Kind of a Ho Hum weather pattern for awhile here, the next hope for snow is...ah, nevermind. The timing is too far out to even speculate on amounts.

More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.

• Watch for newly formed and reactive wind slabs as you transition into wind affected terrain.
• Approach lee and cross-loaded slopes with caution.
• Avoid rock outcroppings, convexities, and anywhere the snowpack is thin and/or variable.