Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Due to the number of field observations

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday: Clear, cold and dry. Treeline temperatures around -8C, winds light, initially from the northeast, becoming easterly on Wednesday. Some cloud appearing Thursday.

On Sunday two skiers were caught in an avalanche on the North Shore on Sunday in steep, rugged terrain. There's a photo on the North Shore Rescue Facebook page. On Saturday, a size 1.5 skier triggered avalanche was reported on the MIN. The slab was 20-30cm thick and the avalanche was 30-40m wide. Other social media from the weekend indicated highly unstable conditions. With dry, cold weather, avalanches will become harder to trigger, but I'd urge caution, since the cold temps will prolong the possibility of skier-triggered avalanches longer than is usual for this region.

Highly variable snowfall amounts were reported across the region. In the deepest areas in the south of the region, upwards of 1 m of new storm snow accumulated over the weekend; closer to Squamish, it was more like 30 cm. The new snow sits on an old surface that was highly variable and may include well settled snow on southerly aspects, loose snow on shaded aspects, isolated pockets of surface hoar, and sun crusts on steep solar aspects. The nature of the bond between the new snow and old is critical right now. Colder than usual temperatures mean this interface will take longer than normal to stabilize. There may be isolated pockets of buried surface hoar that could act as a good sliding layer in open sheltered areas. Wind slabs can be expected behind exposed, wind-loaded terrain features. An old rain crust is reported to be buried 110-120 cm below the surface in the North Shore mountains. This layer is still failing on snowpack tests, but is likely difficult to trigger in most places now. Below the crust, the snowpack is well settled and strong.