Kananaskis

Another warm day for Friday. Expect moist snow to go well into the alpine with daytime warming. Limit exposure to sunny slopes and overhead hazards such as solar slopes and cornices.

More pin wheeling and wet point releases were observed today. A small, sz 1.5 cornice fell off of Snow Peak on Thursday.

Wide variety of surface conditions depending on aspect and elevation. These include sastrugi, hard wind slab, soft wind slab,wet snow and breakable sun crust. On a heli flight today, we saw +8c at 2350m. Expect moist snow in the valley bottoms and on solar aspects to have formed a new crust, or at the very least made the existing crust thicker. Previous wind slabs are still present, especially in lee and cross loaded gullies. The two surface hoar layers can be found 5-10cm below the surface and 35-50cm below the surface; they are breaking down and not likely to be triggerable. The deep persistent layer of the November rain crust is being monitored, but likely only triggerable in shallow snowpack areas.

Friday will be another warm day with freezing levels rising to 2400m. Winds will start out in the moderate range from the West and then increase to strong westerly by mid-day. Saturday will bring a cooling trend.

More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.

• Avoid steep, sun-exposed slopes when the air temperature is warm or when solar radiation is strong.
• Approach lee and cross-loaded slopes with caution.
• Pay attention to cornices and give them a wide berth when traveling on or below ridges.