Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Due to the number of field observations

By Thursday an upper ridge will build behind the cold front bringing cooler conditions with mostly cloudy skies and light precipitation amounts. Light northwest winds and alpine temperatures dropping to -15 will persist through the forecast period. Freezing levels at valley bottom.

No new avalanches have been reported from this region. However; on Tuesday, reports from the North Columbia-Selkirk/ Monashees were still indicating that the buried surface hoar layer is very touchy to skier/ rider triggers and numerous avalanches size 1-2.5 were reported. With a thicker slab overlying this touchy layer, I dont expect things to improve over the holiday period and suspect this layer is primed for human triggers.

New snow up to 10 cm fell Tuesday night with light- moderate southwest winds adding more load to the upper snowpack. This brings storm snow totals 40-80 cm above a very touchy surface hoar layer that was buried mid-December. Below 2100 m this storm slab sits on a thick, solid crust that has been acting as a perfect sliding layer. Storm slabs will be very touchy to the weight of a skier/ rider, especially in wind effected areas. A hard rain crust with facets from early November is buried over 1 m down and smaller avalanches running on the surface hoar may act as a trigger.