Avalanche Forecast

Moderate -

Friday: Cloudy with isolated flurries and a trace of new snow, increasing overnight. Moderate to strong south winds. Freezing level to 1800 metres with alpine high temperatures around -3. Weak overnight cooling.Saturday: Cloudy with continuing scattered flurries and about 5 cm of new snow. Moderate to strong west winds. Freezing level to 1600 metres with alpine high temperatures around -4.Sunday: Mainly sunny. Light west winds. Freezing level to 1700 metres with alpine high temperatures around -5.

No new avalanches were reported in the Cariboos on Wednesday, but reports from the North Columbias included observations of numerous natural wind slab release from size 1-2 on north through east aspects in the alpine. A skier triggered size 2 storm slab resulted in a near miss. Another recent very large (size 3.5) storm slab was observed to have released on a large, wind-loaded alpine feature. Reports from Tuesday included observations of several large (size 2) wind slabs that released naturally as a result of recent strong winds.Observations were hindered by poor visibility on Monday.Reports from Sunday and late last week showed a pattern of heightened cornice failure activity, with several cornice releases triggering large persistent slabs and wind slabs.Looking forward, continuing warm temperatures will be maintaining elevated chances of loose wet avalanche and cornice activity before another round of light snowfall introduces new surface instabilities over Friday night and Saturday.

About 50 cm of rapidly settling storm snow covers a supportive crust on all aspects to at least 2100 m (and possibly higher on south aspects).Within this storm snow there are several different crusts with the shallowest of these (down about 25 cm) becoming a gradually diminishing concern as warm temperatures have promote settlement and bonding in the upper snowpack. Recently formed wind slabs on the surface at higher elevations are expected to be on a similar stabilizing trend.With warm daytime temperatures and poor overnight recovery of cold temperatures, there remains some lingering concern around reactivity at the mid-March persistent weak layer in the alpine where it is found 100 to 150 cm below the surface. This buried crust/surface hoar interface may still be capable of producing large avalanches if triggered with a heavy load, such as a cornice collapse.Deeper persistent weak layers from December and January may be starting to become reactive to very large triggers. A recent cornice collapse is believe to have initiated a slab release on an early season layer, 300 cm deep.