Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Due to the number of field observations

A ridge of high pressure will form on Sunday delivering a mix of sun and cloud. By Sunday afternoon, an unstable air mass will bring intermittent convective snowfall which should result in light to locally moderate accumulations for the rest of the forecast period. Ridgetop winds should remain generally moderate from the southwest with daytime freezing levels hovering around 1500m.

Over the past week, isolated slab avalanches to size 2.5 have occurred on persistent weaknesses buried on March 11th. In a few cases, avalanches failed with light inputs such as remote triggers. New snow and wind has promoted widespread storm slab avalanche activity, but it has also added load to these deeper, more destructive layers. There's a fair bit of uncertainty as to how the March 11th interface will react to storm loading. That said, I'd resist heading into aggressive higher elevation as any releases on this layer would be destructive in nature.

Deep and dense new storm slabs to have formed in response to steady wind, snowfall and warm temperatures prior to the weekend. At lower elevations, rain has saturated the snowpack. Cornices may also be fragile. A weak crust/facet persistent weak layer, buried up to 80 cm down, has started to play up in isolated terrain (see avalanche summary). Avalanche problems associated with this layer may linger for a while with the potential for surprisingly large and destructive avalanches. Below this, the snowpack is reported to be generally well-settled and strong.