Regions
Kootenay Boundary.
Practice good sluff management, especially if you're headed into bigger terrain.
Confidence
Fair - Forecast snowfall amounts are uncertain
Weather Forecast
The region should pick up 1 to 5 cm Sunday night and another few cm on Monday. Generally light SW winds are expected while the freezing level remains at valley bottom. Looks like it goes high and dry until Thursday night when we're expecting another shot of very warm SW air and heavy precipitation, (otherwise known as Pineapple Express) which is expected to intensify through the weekend with the freezing level rising above the peaks of the Kootenay Boundary. Don't shoot the messenger.
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches have been reported.
Snowpack Summary
Recent sunny weather and high freezing levels have created a mostly supportive widespread melt-freeze crust thats been reported on all aspects up to 2400m. A widespread new layer of surface hoar up to 15mm in size is said to be developing on top of this crust. The mid-January weak layer of buried surface hoar is down about 20-50 cm and continues to give planar results in snow profile tests. The mid-December crust/facet/surface hoar layer can be found down around 50cm deep in low snowpack areas, and about 100cm down in deeper snowpack areas. There may still be potential to trigger this deeper layer from shallow spots and in very isolated areas.
Problems
Loose Dry
Loose Dry avalanches are the release of dry unconsolidated snow and typically occur within layers of soft snow near the surface of the snowpack. These avalanches start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-dry avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs.
Persistent Slabs
Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.