Avalanche Forecast
Regions: Waterton, Waterton Lakes.
Conditions are changing, cold air will depart over the weekend bringing strong winds and rising temps. Choose terrain carefully and allow the snowpack to adjust to the new inputs.
Still limited field observations on the surface hoar layer buried on Dec 14th. Suspect the natural cycle observed at treeline likely failed on this layer.
Confidence
Low
Avalanche Summary
Widespread natural avalanche cycle in this weeks storm snow. Avalanches up to size 2 were observed on road patrol with isolated larger results now buried by new snow. The largest concentration of results was at treeline, suspect 2022-12-14 surface hoar.
Snowpack Summary
50cm of storm snow in the last week falling with L N'erly winds building soft reverse loaded slabs. This overlies the 2022-12-14 surface hoar layer and a settling midpack. Below 1900m the lower snowpack is faceted, however, no failures have been observed. We are tracking two separate unreactive crusts from early season warm-ups.
Weather Summary
Friday
Temps warming through the day with an alpine high -20. Winds will increase through the day from the west with 100km/h ridgetop gusts possible. Light flurries possible.
Saturday
Temps continue to rise with an alpine daytime high of -5. Overcast skies and strong to extreme SW wind.
Sunday
Temps hold around -5 today with strong to extreme SW wind. Broken cloud cover today.
Terrain and Travel Advice
- Be carefull around freshly wind loaded features.
- Avoid lee and cross-loaded terrain.
- Carefully assess open slopes and convex rolls where buried surface hoar may be preserved.
Avalanche Problems
Wind Slabs
With lots of new low density snow available for transport strong winds beginning Friday afternoon will quickly build fresh windslab. These slabs may be built on a surface hoar layer that was buried on Dec 14th.
Aspects: North, North East, East, South East, South.
Elevations: All elevations.
Likelihood: Likely
Expected Size: 1 - 2.5