Avalanche Forecast

High - The weather pattern is stable

Skies will be overcast and there may be periods of isolated flurries on Wednesday although significant accumulations are not expected. Thursday could see slightly more snow (up to 5cm) while Friday looks to be mainly dry. Winds are expected to be light and variable. There is poor agreement in the weather models about how high the freezing level with get but I'm expecting them to push as high as 1000m on Wednesday before the temperature cools as an Arctic air mass descends on Friday.

No new avalanches were reported over the weekend but sluffing is expected to have occurred on steep south facing slopes.

A skiff of new snow now covers a widespread layer of surface hoar. This surface hoar sits on a crust on aspects exposed to the sun and facets in sheltered and shaded features. Recent mild temperatures have caused the upper snowpack to settle. In sheltered areas around 40 cm of snow now rests on 10 cm of facets. This interface has been producing moderate to hard shears in recent snowpack tests. The field team was out traveling around the region last week and they found surprisingly little wind effected snow with the exception of thin stiff wind slabs sitting above facets in the immediate lee of features in the Alpine. It sounds like the story is a little different around Castle Mountain where upper elevation terrain has seen quite a bit of recent wind out of the west and now north.