Increasing winds on sunday will transition us from a dry loose to windslab problem. Keep an eye on what the weather is doing, and feel for stiffening snow as you travel through terrain. Skiing is still marginal at lower elevations.
Increasing southwest winds on Sunday will blow the recent storm snow into wind slabs. Keep an eye on conditions as you enter wind affected terrain, things could change quickly over the course of the day.
Loose surface snow will slide easily on the newly formed December 9 crust, especially on steep smooth slopes (think fans below cliffs, alpine bowls, steep gully features like Akamina Lake Chutes). Many of these have already released naturally.
Friday: Mainly cloudy, trace precipitation. Light E winds with an alpine high of -7, low -12
Saturday: Very similar to Friday, with a clearing and cooling trend in the evening.
Sunday: Increasing winds from the southwest up to 50km/h at ridgetop. Temperatures remaining in the -8 to -12 range.
In the Cameron lake area, 10-20cm of pristine low density storm snow sits on a newly formed crust. This overlies a well consolidated midpack above the 2020-11-05 ice crust that forms the bottom of the snowpack. Treeline snow depth in the Cameron lake area just over 1m with amounts tapering quickly at lower elevations and in other areas of the park.
Several loose dry avalanches big enough to sweep you off your feet and into any obstacles were observed on steep slopes on all aspects thursday. These were running on the newly formed December 10 crust.
