Recent wind and snow is forming pockets of wind slab in the alpine and exposed areas at tree line. Test adjacent low consequence features before making the decision to drop into your line.
Weather Forecast
Mainly cloudy today with light snow flurries. Alpine high of -10, Westerly winds 15-35 kph and the freezing level remaining at valley bottom. Cool temps and small amounts of precip over the next few days as a ridge of high pressure builds for the weekend accompanied by a possible spike in temperatures and rising freezing level.
Snowpack Summary
15cm in the past 48hrs rests on a strong, settled snowpack with only a few layers of note. The Jan17th surface hoar (20mm) is buried 20-40cm and seems most problematic at 1600-2100m in sheltered areas. The buried PWLs (Nov 21st and Oct Crust) have been unreactive in stability tests, but could be trigger from steep, shallow, rocky areas.
Avalanche Summary
Several sz 2 avalanches along the highway corridor from extreme terrain yesterday. No recent avalanche reports from the backcountry in our region, but several skier triggered avalanches up to size 2.5 to the East and West of the Park. Several skier triggered avalanches up to sz 2 last weekend running on the Jan 17 surface hoar / sun crust layer.
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.