Waterton Lakes

This is a good time to avoid all avalanche terrain! We have seen a significant avalanche cycle with the past few days of warming and expect hazard to remain elevated until the snowpack starts to refreeze.

Numerous natural wet loose avalanches to size 2, several wet slab avalanches to size 2.5 and a few persistent slab avalanches to size 3 were observed on Wednesday.

Surface snow is moist at all elevations with below treeline moist to ground. The snow surface will likely begin refreezing over the next few days. There is a robust melt freeze crust buried 30 - 80 cm deep. This crust exists everywhere except for northerly aspects above 1900 m. The January drought layer lies 50 –130 cm deep, with snow depths at treeline averaging 130–200 cm.

We are at the tail end of a significant warm up, we should see temperatures start to decrease late on Thursday and then some incoming snow for the weekend. See the table below for a more detailed forecast.

Check out the Mountain Weather Forecast for the most up to date information.

• Carefully manage your exposure to overhead hazards.
• Back off slopes as the surface becomes moist or wet with rising temperatures.
• Avoid thin areas like rocky outcrops where you're most likely to trigger avalanches on deep weak layers.