Avalanche Forecast

Moderate

Sunshine reported a cornice failure today on an NW aspect size 2 as well as some wet loose size 1. No other avalanches were reported.

A size 2 slab was remotely triggered from 50m on April 1st in the Purple Bowl at Lake Louise. The slab was reported to be 60cm deep and 75m wide. This would be a northwest aspect at around 2500m and would be the skier's right of a similar event triggered on the February 3rd layer just over a week ago.

Up to 20cm of storm snow is forecasted Tues night, this will overlie a variety of crusts up to ~2800m on solar aspects, and up to ~2300m on northerly aspects. In the high alpine, this will overlie settled and wind-affected snow

Our main concern for persistent layers is shallow snowpack areas on northerly alpine aspects where no crusts are found in the upper snowpack and the midpack is thinner/weaker. Triggering the Feb 3 facet/crust layer and basal depth hoar remains possible

Tues night: Strong winds from the West, followed by precipitation up to 20cm. Temperatures will begin to fall.

Wednesday: Cloudy with sunny periods. Continued cooling, light ridge wind gusting up to 45km/h. Freezing level 1800m. Precip nil.

Thursday: Cloudy with sunny periods. High -5°C. Freezing level valley bottom.

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• Watch for newly formed and reactive wind slabs as you transition into wind affected terrain.
• Loose avalanches may start small but they can grow and push you into dangerous terrain.
• Avoid thin areas like rock outcroppings where you're most likely to trigger avalanches failing on deep weak layers.
• Use caution on large alpine slopes, especially around thin areas that may propagate to deeper instabilities.