Avalanche Forecast

Good

Tonight and Monday: An arctic ridge is building and is there to stay for a little while. Expect some cloudy periods, light N winds becoming light to moderate from the NE and cold temperatures (-15 C in the alpine).Tuesday: The ridge is gaining more strength spreading more dry and cold weather. Light to moderate NE winds, partly cloudy skies, alpine temperatures around -18 C.Wednesday: More of the same. Mainly clear skies, cold temperatures and light winds from the N.

Several storm slabs size 1 and 2 were reported primarily on N aspects. 

A few cms of recent snow is sitting on a variety of hard surfaces in the alpine from crust on solar aspects to hard windslabs. Also, some pockets of very soft windslabs have developed due to wind transported snow. It has been reported that these windslabs are reactive to skier traffic. At lower elevations, the thin layer of light dry new snow has buried the late January surface hoar at and below treeline. Cold alpine temperatures are facetting the surface snow at higher elevations and lower elevation N aspect shallower snowpack areas is facetted to the ground in some areas. Deeply buried weak layers continue to exist, the recent report of a natural avalanche running to the ground in basal facets on a very steep N facing slope in the alpine is a good sign of this.