We're getting there! Seems like winter has decided to show up for 2025 after all. Cool temps and light snow are breathing new life into our season. Enjoy, but as always, keep tabs of your surroundings and snowpack.
Expect new windslabs in immediate lee areas. These soft slabs are subtle, difficult to detect and easy to underestimate. Caution in unsupported terrain.
If triggered, surface wind slabs may step down and involve this layer. Avalanche sizes could be surprisingly large if this happens.
A few loose dry avalanches and sluffs from the past 24 hours. No slabs.
Continued flurries and very light winds have continued to build our snowpack. Lee areas tucked into the main divide range have 20-30 of light snow, while the more wind exposed areas have seen some mild slab development. Overall the feeling is our shallow snowpack has weathered the dry spell reasonably well with only isolated areas of problematic crusts. That's not to say the Dec 7th and Oct crusts aren't worth some thought, but so far we haven't seen them really take off as an avalanche problem. That could very well change with additional load, either from active snow (trickle loading scenario), or wind loading. It's worth investigating the deeper layers to test how they are reacting to any new loading.
See attached profile from Burstall Pass for specifics. Burstall is our "deep snow" region, so its not completely representative, but it gives an idea.
Overnight tonight will see a low of -12° on the Spray and -17 in the Bow Valley. Daytime high will increase to -7° on the Spray Road. The mild inversion is appreciated! Skies will be cloudy with continued flurries giving a few centimeters of snow. Ridgetop southeasterly winds will be light, but expect them to swing around to the NW by tomorrow afternoon.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
