Avalanche Forecast

Good

Saturday night and Sunday: An upper ridge remains over the coast bringing dry conditions and light NW and N winds and skies with few to scattered cloud cover. Freezing levels and temperatures and will vary quite significantly between day and night, rising to 900 m. in the afternoon and temperatures dropping to -8 at night. Monday: The ridge remains anchored across the South coast but cloud cover will thicken somewhat in the northern part of the region due to a system passing over the Northwest coast. Winds should remain light and temperatures becoming relatively mild in the afternoon. Tuesday: Temperatures warming up to -2 C, freezing levels reaching 1600 m. in the afternoon, no precipitation is expected, winds remaining light.

Some sluffing (dry loose avalanche) in steep terrain was observed and large glide cracks on SE aspects in the alpine.

Light amounts of new snow mingle with newly formed surface hoar. This surface structure overlies variably wind affected snow. As an overview, the snowpack is generally well-settled. Surface hoar layers buried in the upper/mid snowpack appear to be gaining strength but still exhibit hard, sudden results in snowpack tests. Near the base of the snowpack, a crust/facet layer appears to be inactive. A thick layer of facets making up the bottom the snowpack was observed on a north aspect near Wendy Thompson Hut in the Duffey Lake area. Although unlikely, triggering an avalanche on a basal weakness may be possible from thin snowpack areas or with a very heavy trigger.