Regions
Kootenay Boundary.
Looks like another dry and relatively cool weekend. Avalanche danger remains low and hopefully the light dusting of snow improves snow quality.
Confidence
Good - The weather pattern is stable
Weather Forecast
A ridge of high pressure rebuilds overnight and results in clearing skies and sunny weather for the weekend. The freezing level is near valley bottom on Saturday and up to around 1000 m on Sunday. Winds are light gusting to moderate from the NE-NW. A weak low pressure system could cross the province on Monday bringing light or moderate snowfall, but theres a good deal of uncertainty with this disturbance.
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches have been reported in the past few days.
Snowpack Summary
A trace of new snow sits on the previous snow surfaces. The most prominent feature in the snowpack is the thick upper crust. This crust is supportive all the way to ridge crest and is effectively "capping" the snowpack, keeping riders from tickling any deeper weak layers. On solar aspects the proud crust is on the surface (softening during sunny days), and on shadier aspects there may be 5 - 20 cm of settled storm snow on it. There are still weak layers in the snowpack that we'll continue to monitor, but for now these layers are dormant. We would likely need significant warming and/or heavy loading to re-activate them.
Problems
Persistent Slabs
Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.