Avalanche Forecast

High -

The storm is over unfortunately! Winds will be light to moderate out of the SW on Thursday as a high pressure system builds back in over the region. Temperatures are expected to cool dramatically with -17C forecast for thursday morning. 

A few sz 2 windslabs were observed failing within the at the interface with the recent storm snow. These were up to 50m across, 40-60cm deep and ran to the top of their normal runouts. A noteable sz 2.5 was observed in the Black Prince area on a NE aspect that ran to the middle of its runout that looked to have entrained some wet snow. Black prince area also had numerous sz 2 avalanches down 15-20cm failing on surface hoar.  

Up to 30cm of snow fell in the past 24hrs with only isolated variable winds in upper elevation. This new snow is overlying a variety of surfaces from surface hoar (up to 2100m) and crusts (solar aspects) that formed in the big warm up last week as well as hard windslabs. Carefully evaluate the bond of this new snow as it begins to strengthen over the next few days. The November crust is down 50-80cm now and continues to produce variable results. The snowpack felt a bit cakey along ridgelines on Wednesday so be watching for winds to increase making these windslabs more reactive. In some areas below 2000m the snowpack was moist...

• Fresh wind slabs will likely form throughout the day, diligently watch for changing conditions.
• Be careful with wind loaded pockets, especially near ridge crests and roll-overs.
• Don't let the desire for deep powder pull you into high consequence terrain.
• Avoid thin areas like rock outcroppings where you're most likely to trigger avalanches failing on deep weak layers.