Avalanche Forecast

Good - -1

Sunday: Light snowfall overnight (4-8cm) should taper off in the morning before another weak band of precipitation pushes in late in the day, bring another 4-8cm overnight. Freezing level around 1400m.Monday: Clearing by mid-morning with slightly cooler temperatures.Tuesday: Clear with light winds.

Naturally triggered loose snow avalanches were observed on Friday in response to warm wet snow falling. A few very small skier-triggered avalanches were also reported, failing in the 5-10cm of moist new snow.

Below treeline, the surface snow is now moist. Generally light snowfall has buried an assortment of old snow surfaces including crusts, old wind slabs, surface hoar and surface facets. The crusts formed on all aspects at lower elevations and on steep solar aspects higher up. Old wind slabs were on a variety of aspects behind exposed terrain features. The surface hoar (5-10mm) was most prominent at and above the recent cloud associated with inversion conditions. Yesterday's moist snowfall may have destroyed this surface hoar in many places. Surface facets have grown particularly on northern aspects where colder temperatures have persisted. In general the snowpack is now well bonded in most locations. A mid-pack layer of concern is a rain crust (buried on Feb 1st) now down 10-40 cm, which exists up to about 2000 m. This may have potential to become reactive with additional snow load in areas where additional crusts do not lie above it, such as north aspects at treeline. Lower layers include a mid-January crust (down 50-100 cm), and a mid-December crust (down up to 200 cm); these now only present concerns in shallow snowpack areas. The average snowpack depth at 1650m is around 240cm.