Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Wind effect is extremely variable

MONDAY: Cloudy with sunny periods, light west winds, alpine temperatures around -4 C in the south and -8 C in the north.TUESDAY: Mix of sun and cloud, light northeast winds, alpine temperatures around -10 C.WEDNESDAY: Sunny, light northeast winds, alpine temperatures around -13 C.

Recent MIN reports do a great job highlighting recent avalanche activity in the region. Wind slabs were very reactive to human triggers over the weekend, releasing numerous size 1-1.5 avalanches on north and east aspects. On Friday, two skiers were caught in a larger wind slab avalanche that carried them down a steep north facing couloir in the Coquihalla area (see MIN report). Wind slabs will likely continue to be reactive to human triggers in the lee of exposed terrain the next few days. In thin rocky areas to the north, wind slabs could potentially step down to deeper weak layers. Thanks to everyone who's shared observations on the MIN!

SOUTHERN AREAS (e.g. Coquihalla): Light flurries have buried a variety of crusts and settled storm snow. Small fresh wind slabs linger on northerly aspects.NORTHERN AREAS (e.g. Duffey Lake): Light flurries with strong southwest winds have formed fresh wind slabs in the lee of exposed terrain. The new snow sits above a thin breakable sun crust and isolated pockets of surface hoar, potentially creating weak interfaces for wind slabs to propagate along. The upper snowpack has 50-80 cm of settled storm snow sitting above the mid-January surface hoar and facet interface. This interface produced large avalanches during the last storm cycle, and may still be poorly bonded in thin snowpack areas such as the South Chilcotins.