Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Forecast snowfall amounts are uncertain on Friday

THURSDAY: A mix of sun and cloud with flurries during the day, and a stronger system moving in late in the day.FRIDAY: Cloudy with 15-20cm of fresh snow accompanied by moderate SW winds. Alpine temperatures reaching -5 C.SATURDAY: A mix of sun and cloud with flurries bringing another 2-5 cm. Light to moderate SW winds and alpine temperatures around -5 C.

Reports from Tuesday include numerous natural dry loose avalanches and one storm slab up to Size 2 within the recent storm snow. Skiers also triggered a couple Size 1 soft slabs in steep alpine terrain and a few cornices also fell off. On Sunday and Monday we had reports of natural, skier and snowcat triggered storm and wind slab, and dry loose avalanches up to Size 2. Of note were two very large natural deep persistent slab avalanches in the Selkirk mountains near Trout Lake. One was a 250 cm deep Size 3 on a north aspect on Sunday and the other was a 300 cm deep Size 4 on a southwest aspect on Monday that filled the creek at the bottom of the valley and ran 100m up the other side, both of which released on deeply buried old facets. Subsequent explosives control on Monday produced a Size 3 from the hang fire.

Around 60-100cm of settled storm snow from the past week is bonding poorly to faceted snow, thin sun crust on steep southerly aspects, as well as more isolated small buried surface hoar. Southerly winds have formed touchy slabs at all elevations with multiple weaknesses within and under this recent storm snow. A persistent weakness buried mid-February is now down about 90-135cm and composed of a thick rain crust up to about 1800 m, sun crusts on steep solar aspects, and spotty surface hoar on shaded aspects. This layer has seen a recent increase in more sudden snowpack test results and has been identified as a failure plane in a number of recent avalanches. Its reactivity has been especially prominent over the crust at lower elevations.