30-40cm of new snow over the weekend has improved ski quality. Give the new snow time to settle. Heightened avalanche conditions exist on specific terrain features which require careful terrain and snow evaluation.
Sunday's field patrol noted that moderate ridgeline and alpine Southwest winds were whipping up the new storm snow into potential windslabs. A party triggered small windslabs in steep alpine morainal terrain on Nov 20th. Despite the lack of natural activity one should remain highly suspicious.
The weekend brought 30-40cm of new snow to the Icefields. As a result, loose dry avalanche activity was noted in the Icefields area. This condition will persist as the storm snow settles.
Sunday's Icefield team noted numerous sun activated loose dry avalanches up to size 1.5. Some running a fair distance. Visibility was good. One size 2 windslab occurred on Snowdome in the alpine. Saturday's field team had very poor visibility and no avalanches were observed. Nov 20th observed a few size 1 human triggered wind slab avalanches in steep alpine morainal terrain.
The Icefields received 20-40cm of new snow this weekend. Travel is supportive and Parkers manual weather station has 109cm height of snow. A 2cm thick crust is at midpack and found up to 2200m elevation. Maligne received 10cm of new snow.
Post your observations to the MIN!
Monday will bring clouds, sun, flurries, -8 °C, and light West winds. Tuesday to Thursday are expected to be sunny periods, isolated flurries, -14 °C, and light Southwest winds.
