Terrain sheltered from the wind will have the best and safest riding.
Wind slabs may be reactive in leeward terrain at upper elevations and may slide especially easily where they overlie crust. Recent flurries and shifting winds may have obscured the problem and/or widened its distribution.
On Friday, a few natural wind slabs occurred in the alpine on south and east aspects. They were large (size 2 to 2.5).
Soft wind slabs developing in the alpine produced releases to size 1.5 with sled traffic, to size 1 with skier traffic, and ran naturally to size 2 in the southeast of the region on Thursday.
About 50 cm of snow since March 7 has been redistributed by strong winds in exposed alpine and treeline terrain. It sits on old wind effect at these elevations and on a melt-freeze crust to at least 1600 m. It may contain two crusts on treeline solar aspects and gave moderate, sudden test results on 60 cm-deep stellar grains in Allan Creek Thursday.
Layers from late Jan and early Feb, both made of surface hoar, facets, and/or crust, are 100 to 150 cm deep. They're showing up less in test results but may remain a problem in isolated thin-to-thick snowpack areas above the elevation of our newest crust. A north aspect at 1600 m in the lower Canoe gave moderate, propagating results on the 90 cm-deep Jan layer Wednesday.
Saturday Night
Partly cloudy. 1 cm of snow. 30 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -13 °C.
Sunday
Mix of sun and clouds. 1 cm of snow. 30 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -12 °C.
Monday
Mostly cloudy. 10 to 25 cm of snow. 70 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -4 °C.
Tuesday
Mostly cloudy. Up to 20 mm of rain at treeline. 80 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature 3 °C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
