New snow may not bond well to the older snow surface, especially where it's blown into dense pockets of wind slab.
Summary
Confidence
High
Weather Forecast
Monday: Around 5 cm overnight then cloudy with sunny breaks and a chance of flurries. The freezing level rises to around 1500 m during the day. Ridge winds are moderate or strong from the W-NW, easing to light during the day. Tuesday: Increasing cloud with flurries developing. The freezing level jumps up to 1500 m and winds ease to light. Wednesday: Cloudy with sunny breaks and a chance of flurries. The freezing level is near 1600 m and winds are light.
Avalanche Summary
Recent avalanche activity has consisted mainly of loose wet sluffs on steep sun-exposed slopes during the day and natural or explosive-triggered cornice falls to size 2.5. On Saturday, explosive-triggered cornices did not release slabs below on north and east aspects in the alpine. Late last week there were a couple reports of failing cornices triggering slabs up to 60 cm deep on slopes below.
Snowpack Summary
A dusting of new snow overlies a melt-freeze crust on solar aspects and lower elevation terrain, and might be covering a layer of surface hoar on shady and sheltered slopes at treeline and in the alpine. Expect thin new wind slabs in exposed terrain. The surface hoar and/or crust layer buried in mid-February is now down 40-75cm. This layer was less reactive over the weekend with cooler temperatures. Large weak cornices have recently been a concern and have recently triggered persistent slabs on slopes below. The early January surface hoar/facet layer is typically down 70-120cm. Triggering an avalanche on this layer has become unlikely but it still has isolated potential to produce very large avalanches with a heavy trigger. In general, the lower snowpack is well settled and strong, apart from some thin snowpack areas where basal facets exist.
pmarshall,
Avalanche Canada
