Pay attention to the wind, theres a lot of recent snow to build fresh wind slabs.
Increasing southwest wind overnight will quickly build slabs within the recent snow. Gusty winds will continue along with more flurries into Saturday night, expect fresh snow to continue to be reactive with rider traffic.
A number of buried weak layers remain possible to trigger. These layers appear to be most problematic in upper treeline and alpine elevations, in shallow, variable, rocky start zones. A sensitive wind or storm slab overlying this problem could serve as the perfect trigger for a destructive step-down avalanche.
On Thursday, our field team observed 2 recent natural avalanches. With reduced visibility, the size 1.5-2 avalanches were 60-80 cm deep and suspected to have failed on a rain crust.
On Wednesday, skiers triggered a large, size 2 avalanche near Ningunsaw. The Deep Persistent avalanche was triggered on an east aspect near ridgetop in a thin, rocky start zone and failed on basal facets.
Reports Tuesday documented a very large (size 3.5) natural deep persistent slab avalanche observed in the Babines on a northwest aspect around 1700 m and failing on basal facets 150 cm deep. This speaks to the importance of conservative terrain selection through this period of active weather. Several less surprising small to large (size 1-2.5) naturals were also observed in steep leeward terrain in the same area.
Observations from Monday in the snowier southwestern part of the region show our recent storm snow reacting to ski cutting, which produced numerous small (up to size 1.5) storm slabs on steep slopes at treeline and below with crowns up to 40 cm. Isolated natural releases were also observed in the alpine.
If you are out in the backcountry, please share your observations with the Mountain Information Network!
Strong south wind has found 15-30 cm of recent snow, quickly promoting slab formation through Friday. The most recent snow adds to 50-10 cm of recent storm snow that has been getting continuously blown into wind slabs by southwest winds at treeline and above. The growing storm total sits on a crust from the warming event on January 25th.
The mid and lower snowpack continues to bond and stabilize. A few concerning weak layers can still be found in the top meter of the snowpack including a surface hoar layer from early January and a crust from late December.
Friday night
Light flurries, trace to 5 cm overnight. Southwest winds increasing to 40 km/hr. Treeline low temperature -10 C with freezing level valley bottom.
Saturday
Mostly cloudy, possible sunny breaks and isolated flurries, trace to 5 cm. Southwest winds gusting 40-60 km/hr. Treeline high temperature -5 C.
SundaySnow starting late Saturday, 10 cm by Sunday morning. Southwest wind gusting to 70 km/hr with the storm. Treeline high temperature -2 C.
MondaySnow tapering through the day, 5 cm. Southwest winds easing to 30-60 km/hr. Treeline high temperature -5 C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
