Start and end your day early. Solar radiation and daytime warming can rapidly increase the avalanche hazard.
The deep persistent layers are still in the snowpack. Be careful on high north aspects where there are no crusts above these layers.
Isolated wind slabs have been building from south-west winds and now the winds have switched to a more northerly direction, look out for loading in not the usual places.
This is combination of our midseason persistent weak layers and the weak facets & depth hoar that live at the bottom of the snowpack. The likelihood of triggering this layer has been decreasing but if triggered, would likely result in a large destructive avalanche.
Recently large cornice failures and small wind slabs have been observed at alpine elevations.
On Sunday a size 3.5 deep persistent avalanche was observed on the subpeak to the east of Mt. Saskatchewan.
5-20 cm of recent new snow exists in sheltered areas.. Wind slabs exist on all aspects in the alpine due to recent variable wind loading. The upper snowpack at tree line & below is a series of melt-freeze crusts and moist snow. The mid-pack and lower snowpack is dry, faceted and weak. High north aspects do not have any of crusts in the upper snowpack which may make it easier to trigger the deep persistent layer.
Thursday
Sunny with cloudy periods. Alpine High -3 °C. Mostly light winds gusting to 35 km/h. Freezing levels to 1900 metres.
Friday
Sunny with cloudy periods. Alpine Low -5 °C, High +2 °C. Wind light to 15 km/h. Freezing level to 2900 metres.
Saturday
Cloudy with sunny periods and isolated flurries. Alpine Low -3 °C, High 0 °C. Wind light to 15 km/h. Freezing level to 2300 metres.
