Avalanche forecast

Kananaskis

Jan 27 – 28, 2018Alberta Parks
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Archived · expired 9 years ago

Avalanche danger

Mon
Tue
Alpine
3 · Considerable
Treeline
3 · Considerable
Below
2 · Moderate
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Highlights

Despite a not-so-encouraging forecast, there is some good skiing to be had. Conservative terrain at treeline seems to be the place to go.

Avalanche problems

  • Wind Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    1.5–2.5
    These are multiple slabs that are laminated together. Stepping down to deeper instabilities is likely.

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    1.5–2.5
    As snow load increases, the "triggerability" of this layer will go up.

Confidence

High -

Weather Forecast

Cloudy with sunny periods and isolated flurries tomorrow. High temp of -7. Winds increasing slightly tomorrow, west at 40km/hr.

Avalanche Summary

Poor visibility today but we did see a couple of smaller avalanches from the previous cycle. The most notable was an older sz2 that likely ran on the Dec15 layer.

Snowpack Summary

Flurries continued overnight and throughout today. Amounts added up to about 5cm, bit with settlement the overall storm totals haven't changed much. 20cm seems to be the average for overall new snow at treeline. In today's area (Purple Knob area) the Jan 6th surface hoar was down 65 and much more reactive in tests compared to the last few days. In tests, it failed with only moderate pressure(CTM12, SP). We didn't travel into the alpine today, but believe there is ongoing wind slab development on N to E aspects. As for the other trouble layers, we didn't see any results on them today, but they are still concerning.

Regions covered