Avalanche Forecast

Moderate

No new avalanches, but terrain observations were few.

This a hard snowpack description to write. Every now and then its hard to convey the seriousness of a snowpack in a short written description. We are essentially sitting in a house of cards known as the Nov 25 depth hoar layer. In a nutshell, the lower third of our snowpack is the worst we've seen in a very long time. It is a 30-40cm thick layer of rotten sugar snow. It's bad, and its everywhere. The upper 2/3 of the snow pack is slightly denser snow made up of several layers. Within this denser snow we have another persistent layer we know locally as the Dec 17th surface hoar. While not as bad as the Nov 25, this layer is also reacting in tests as its only down 20-30cm. We have noted a fair bit of regional variability in the depths of these layers layers, be sure to dig and locate them in your terrain of choice.

It's going to snow somewhere tomorrow, but it won't be here. We don't seem to have any significant snow on the way for some time. But on the upside, we are looking at very pleasant temperatures of -8 to -6, light south westerly winds and mostly cloudy skies for tomorrow.

More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.

• Avoid shallow, rocky areas where the snowpack transitions from thick to thin.
• Be aware of the potential for surprisingly large avalanches due to deeply buried weak layers.
• If triggered, wind slabs avalanches may step down to deeper layers resulting in larger avalanches.