Avalanche Forecast

High

Many storm and wind slabs were triggered naturally, by riders, and explosives on Sunday and Monday, releasing within the weekend's storm snow. We expect similar avalanche activity on Wednesday as the next storm rapidly builds new slabs.

We're entering another stormy period, with upwards of 20 cm expected by sunset on Wednesday that will start to form new storm slabs in wind-sheltered terrain. Strong to extreme southerly wind is forecast with the snow, which will rapidly form touchy wind slabs in lee terrain features at higher elevations. These new slabs will overly wind and storm slabs formed from the weekend's 50 cm of snow.

All this snow is bonding to a melt-freeze crust found on sun-exposed slopes up to about 1500 m and on all aspects below 1000 m.

A layer of faceted grains and melt-freeze crust may be found about 100 to 200 cm deep. This layer hasn't produced avalanches in over a week and is currently dormant.

Tuesday Night

Cloudy with snowfall, accumulation 5 cm, 30 to 40 km/h southwest wind, treeline temperature -9 °C.

Wednesday

Cloudy with snowfall, accumulation 10 to 20 cm, 50 to 70 km/h south wind, treeline temperature -7 °C.

Cloudy with snowfall then clearing, accumulation 15 to 25 cm, 30 to 40 km/h west wind, treeline temperature -6 °C.

Cloudy with light snowfall, accumulation 1 to 3 cm, 40 km/h southwest wind, treeline temperature -6 °C.

More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.

• Watch for fresh storm slabs building throughout the day.
• Carefully evaluate steep lines for wind slabs.
• Watch for signs of instability like whumpfing, hollow sounds, shooting cracks or recent avalanches.