Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Timing or intensity of solar radiation is uncertain on Sunday

Cloudy with sunny breaks on Sunday before light snow fall on Monday-Tuesday. SUNDAY: Mainly cloudy, sunny breaks possible with isolated flurries and a trace of new snow, increasing overnight. Moderate southwest winds 20-35 Km/hr. Freezing level to 1200 metres with alpine high temperatures around -4.MONDAY: Cloudy with continuing flurries bringing 5-10 cm of new snow, increasing overnight. Moderate southwest winds. Freezing level to 1400 metres with alpine high temperatures of -3.TUESDAY: Snow (10-15cm). Moderate to strong west winds, Freezing level 1500 metres with alpine high temperatures around -1.

Thursday and Friday's reports included several wind slab and storm slab releases. These were natural as well as skier triggered and ski cut, mainly from size 1 to 1.5, and occurred on a range of aspects at treeline and above.On Wednesday a couple of smaller (size 1-1.5) ski cut and skier-triggered storm slabs failed on one of the recently buried weak layers mentioned in our snowpack discussion, down 20 cm. These occurred on northwest and west aspects in the alpine.Looking forward, newly formed wind slabs could remain reactive to human triggering on Sunday. Watch for intervals of solar exposure to destabilize slabs as well as promote loose wet avalanche conditions on steeper, sun-exposed slopes.

10-18cm of new snow fell on Thursday into Friday. Winds were moderate to strong from the south / east, transporting snow in the alpine and upper tree line and creating reactive wind slabs on immediate lee (down wind) features. The new snow has buried a couple of recent layers of storm snow that are separated by temperature and sun crusts at lower elevations and on south aspects. Surface hoar layers have been reported between these storm snow layers on shaded aspects at higher elevations and may be found at approximately 30 and 50 cm below the surface. The deepest of these surface hoar layers was the failure plane in several slab avalanches this week.New snow amounts taper with elevation and below 1800 m, reduced accumulations have buried a supportive crust on all aspects. Deeper persistent weak layers from January and December are generally considered dormant, but could wake up with a surface avalanche stepping down, large cornice fall, or a human trigger in a shallow or variable-depth snowpack area. These layers consist of sun crust, surface hoar and/or facets.