Touchy windslabs have been building in upper elevations up to 60cm thick. Cooler temperatures are coming after the warm up this past week.
RUGGED travel below treeline. Give the snowpack time to settle out.
Recent snow of up to 500cm, warms temps and strong westerly winds are creating touchy windslabs. This problem is more isolated at treeline.
Cornices have grown large over the past few days. Give them a wide berth.
Recent avalanche avalanche activity in the top 100-150cm of the snow pack has been observed due to the warm temps.
The recent widespread historical avalanche cycle is beginning to slow down but it hasn't ended just yet. Recent windslabs on Saturday were still failing in alpine areas as the winds increased throughout the day.
The majority of recent avalanche activity looks to be initiated by Wind/Storm slabs in the alpine then pulling out a wet slab around 2400m that ran on possibly the Jan 27th SH/FC interface.
Temperatures went below freezing on Saturday and as a result there was a 5cm thick supportive crust in the valley floors. Under this crust, the snowpack is generally wet and isothermal to ground up to around 2400m. The cooler temperatures will take a few days to penetrate the snowpack here.
Above 2400m the recent precipitation mainly fell as snow and there is up to 50cm of snow that as of Saturday being redistributed by moderate westerly winds forming new windslabs in the upper elevations. 5cm of new also fell throughout the day on Saturday.
Field observations at treeline and into the Alpine are still very limited and there is lots of uncertainty in this area at this time.
Temperatures at treeline are forecast to continue cooling overnight as clear weather begins to return to the region. Sunday will be cool again with daytime highs around -10C and moderate westerly winds. Snow is forecast beginning towards the start of next week.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
