Avalanche Forecast

Issued: Dec 13th, 2014 3:00PM

The alpine rating is considerable, the treeline rating is moderate, and the below treeline rating is low. Known problems include Deep Persistent Slabs and Wind Slabs.

jeremy.mackenzie, Alberta Parks

Kananaskis.

Travel conditions are pretty ugly at the moment due to a freshly buried rain crust below 2200m. This rain crust is only supportive some of the time and skiing in this stuff is a great way to damage a knee. Alpine areas have fresh wind slabs.

Summary

Confidence

Fair

Weather Forecast

A mix of sun and cloud expected on Sunday with light winds from the North. Alpine temperatures should reach a high of -7 celsius. There is no precipitation expected for at least the next 4 days.

Avalanche Summary

Nothing new was observed today but visibility was extremely limited.

Snowpack Summary

Between 5 and 10cm of heavy wet snow fell overnight. This covered a rain-soaked layer of snow from rain events on Thursday and Friday. Now that temperatures are falling, the rain soaked layer should freeze and "tighten" up. At higher elevations this rain fell as snow and pockets of recently formed wind slab are present. Concern remains for the weak basal combination of rain crust and facets, though this layer is likely less active now at Treeline and below. In Alpine areas, concern for triggering of the basal weakness should remain for some time to come.

Problems

Deep Persistent Slabs

The basal weakness will plague the snowpack for some time. This problem is likely more triggerable in the Alpine at the moment, due to recent re-freezing of a rain-soaked snowpack at lower elevations.

Be aware of thin areas that may propogate to deeper instabilites.>Be aware of the potential for full depth avalanches due to deeply buried weak layers.>

Aspects: North, North East, East, South East, South.

Elevations: Alpine, Treeline.

Likelihood

Possible - Likely

Expected Size

2 - 4

Wind Slabs

While the rain fell at lower elevations in the past two days, snow, wind and warm temperatures contributed to fresh wind slab formation in the Alpine. Keep an eye on lee and cross-loaded features.

Avoid freshly wind loaded features.>

Aspects: North, North East, East, South East.

Elevations: Alpine.

Likelihood

Possible - Likely

Expected Size

1 - 3

Valid until: Dec 14th, 2014 2:00PM