Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Due to limited field observations for the entire period

Wednesday: Moderate snowfall with 5-10cm of accumulation, strong southerly winds, and freezing levels in valley bottoms. Thursday: Light snow with only a few centimetres of accumulation, moderate southeasterly winds and freezing levels in valley bottoms. Friday: Mostly cloudy with isolated light flurries, continued moderate southeasterly winds, and freezing levels remaining in valley bottoms.

No recent avalanches have been reported. On Wednesday last week, a snowmobiler triggered a hard wind slab at the Sinclair riding area. It failed on the November crust/facet layer 30 cm above the ground while side hilling. Check out this incident report for more details. This deep crust/facet layer has been the failure plane for a number of large avalanches further to the west and was suspected to have failed at the Hankin-Evelyn area last weekend.

Storm snow instabilities are likely slowly settling and gaining strength. Spotty surface hoar was buried in the upper snowpack, particularly in sheltered treeline areas. New and buried wind slabs are widespread and exist on a variety of alpine and exposed treeline slopes due to variable winds. Of key concern is a November facet/crust layer which can be found near the base of the snowpack. This layer, which is widespread, can be triggered from thin-spot trigger points, or with a heavy load, such as storm slabs stepping down, a cornice fall or a snowmobile track digging a trench. It has the potential for large, destructive avalanches. In general the snowpack depths, and therefore strength is highly variable due to windy conditions this season.