Selkirk Mountains

An incoming storm is going to scrub the spring-like conditions and usher in another round of snowfall and fresh avalanche concerns. But for today, most slopes remain generally safe from avalanches - that is unless you find about 6 inches of new snow. Continue to use safe travel practices by only exposing one person to steeper terrain at a time and pay attention to isolated new snow hazards that might emerge on Sunday as snowfall and wind speeds work in tandem building shallow drifted slabs.

Change is coming. It’s time to swap out your Hawaiian shirt and flip flops for puffy’s and ditch boots. While the spring-like weather is always a welcomed sight this time of year, for our summer water supply situation, we need more springtime days with snow falling from the sky versus days where the bright hot snowmelting ball is surrounded by blue skies.

Snowfall is expected to arrive around midday Sunday. It’ll take a bit for accumulations to stack deep enough to create fresh avalanche concerns, but we’ll eventually get there overnight or on Monday. The new snow will fall on a fairly locked-up snowpack with our deeper concerns now dormant or been washed to the back of the line from lots of rain then many days of a repetitive thaw-refreeze cycle.

As snowfall gets going, the new snow is likely to be more reactive first on leeward-facing slopes with deeper drifting - near ridges and in cross-loaded gullies. Depending on how wet the initial snowflakes are will have a big influence on how well fresh slabs bond to the old, firm snow surface. Drier, lower-density snow is more likely to sluff with ski or machine disturbance than if the snow is wetter, higher-density. With how smooth and planar the old snow surface is, any flavor of slide is likely to move quickly downhill. Keep your head on a swivel to avoid getting pushed somewhere you don’t want to go.

If you do trigger a smaller, isolated loose snow or slab avalanche today, it is likely to stay confined to the new snow. However, even small slides can have compounding consequences if they happen in the wrong terrain - like above large cliffs, on long and sustained steep slopes, or where you get stuffed in a terrain trap or depression and debris piles in behind you.

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IPAC is now on the Avy app! View, submit, and share observations on the go using the AvyApp. Your backcountry observations are critical for building our avalanche forecasts. Avy provides a centralized location for core trip planning, and you can view streamlined, up-to-date avalanche and weather forecasts for your selected zone, using offline caching. Download Avy today - App Store and Google Play.