Good skiing can be found in sheltered areas and mellow alpine terrain.
There are a couple of generations of wind slabs in the upper 30cm of the upper snowpack, mostly in the alpine Also expect to find some slabs on E trough S aspects from the NW flow earlier in the week.
This problem is still difficult to trigger, but snowpack stability tests today indicate a failure in the basal facets. Any resulting avalanche will be large and destructive.
Friday is forecast to be a mix of sun and cloud with flurries developing in the late afternoon. The temperature is expected to rise to -4c along with moderate to strong SW winds. Saturday is suppose to bring 5-10cm of snow. Stay tuned....
No new avalanches were observed and we pretty much saw the entire region.
The forecasters had the opportunity to hang out with the hydrology guys who monitor the spring run-off. We did an extensive flight of K-Country and here is what we found:
1. Tombstone Pass(East of highway 40): HS of 140cm, moderately weak mid pack, mostly facets but could not get any results with shovel compression test.
2. Mist Mountain (south of Highwood Pass): HS was 100cm with a very weak snowpack throughout with facets. Foot pen was 90cm.
3. Odlum Creek (south of Highwood Pass but further west): We dug a full profile,and found a strong midpack and no shovel test results.The bottom 50cm of the snowpack was the usual facet/depth hoar combo. Temperature gradient of the snowpack was weak.
4. Three Isle Lake: We also dug a full profile here with HS of 170cm, very strong midpack consisting of rounds or rounding facets. Again no results with shovel tests. The bottom 50cm of the snowpack was the usual facet/depth hoar combo. Temperature gradient of the snowpack was weak.
-We did not see one new avalanche in our entire flight. The alpine did look fairly wind effected as there was a strong SW flow.
