Start your day early and keep your objectives flexible.
Your forecasters have no confidence in the strength of the snowpack, and neither should you!
Recently formed wind slabs continue to build with moderate winds, if triggered this will likely initiate deeper instabilities leading to larger-than-expected results.
This problem layer is the crust and facets created by early February's warm spell. It is down 30-80 cm in the snowpack and is a 1-10 cm thick crust or multiple crusts with a layer of weak facets above.
Strong and extended solar effect is expected on all sunny aspects. Open and exposed terrain will accelerate this process and may initiate deeper instabilities.
Numerous loose wet, snowballing, and pinwheels were observed today on steep sunny aspects like Mt Cirrus, the Weeping Wall, Large slabs observed on steep lee alpine features near the Icefields.
Deep storm snow, building wind slabs, and a forecasted warmup will stiffen the upper snowpack into a more cohesive, likely extremely reactive slab over a crust, down 35-60cm. This persistent weak layer is consistently reactive in snowpit tests. The equally worrisome basal depth hoar makes up the bottom third of the snowpack. HS ranges from 80 to 130cm.
Mountain Weather Forecast is available @ Avalanche Canada https://avalanche.ca/weather/forecast
Parker Ridge - Thursday
Cloudy with sunny periods followed by sunny with cloudy periods on Friday. No new precip.
Alpine temperatures: High -3 °C.
Light SW winds.
Freezing level: 1900-2100m.
