Travel in the alpine is not recommended. Treat any wind-loaded terrain as suspect.
Extreme wind has redistributed recent storm snow, forming deep and touchy deposits in lee and crossloaded terrain features at all elevations. Treat the snowpack as suspect anywhere the snow surface isn't scoured.
A weak layer of facets may be found 70 to 100 cm deep. In shallower inland areas, weak depth hoar exists to ground. Shallower wind slabs could step down to this layer, producing very large avalanches.
A large natural avalanche cycle occurred during periods of rapid loading on Tuesday night into Wednesday.
Looking forward, human-triggered avalanches remain likely, particularly in wind-loaded terrain features. The snowpack will need time to stabilize.
Around 30 to 40 cm of snow accumulated over the past few days. Extreme southerly wind means that even deeper deposits are found on northerly and crossloaded slopes, while south-facing slopes remain scoured.
A weak layer of facets may be found around 70 to 100 cm deep. In shallow snowpack areas, the bottom half of the snowpack is composed of weak depth hoar.
Wednesday Night
Increasing clouds. 2 to 5 cm of snow. 40 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -5 °C.
Thursday
Mostly cloudy. 5 cm of snow. 40 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -5 °C.
Friday
Cloudy. 2 to 5 cm of snow. 50 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -1 °C. Freezing level rising to 1000 m.
Saturday
Mostly sunny. 40 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature 0 °C. Freezing level 2600 m.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
