Avalanche Forecast

High -

Saturday looks to be a sunny day with light northerly winds. It will start off cool (near -18) and warm to -7 at treeline elevations. Some models are calling for light flurries late Saturday afternoon, and some are not.

Several small loose dry avalanches were observed in steep Alpine terrain over the past few days. In addition, a few naturally triggered wind slabs up to size 2.0 occurred on all aspects in the alpine, with one running almost full path. On Thursday a size 2.0 cornice failure occurred near Hero's Knob, almost reaching a number of up-tracks in the drainage. On Wednesday forecasters remotely triggered a size 2.5 avalanche on a SE alpine bowl. This slab was 30 to 40cm thick and ran for 450m.

Another 5cm in the last 24 hours brings recent storm snow totals to 25 to 40cm in the last few days. This recent snow remains low density below 2600m. Thin wind slabs are found in Alpine terrain, with several naturally triggered slides observed on Friday on all aspects. Solar aspects are also a concern as the Feb 19 sun crust is buried up to 40cm. This crust layer has caused several avalanches in the past few days, both natural and human-triggered.

• Be alert to conditions that change with elevation and wind exposure.
• Closely monitor how the new snow is bonding to the crust.
• Wind slabs may be poorly bonded to the underlying crust.
• Minimize exposure to sun-exposed slopes when the solar radiation is strong.