New snow may entice you to push into bigger terrain in search of turns but the base and mid pack is still weak. Its hard to be disciplined for the entire season, but thats whats gonna pay off long term.
A facet/depth hoar layer down 80-100cm that was buried mid season. This layer has becoming more active on recent avalanches both natural and human triggerred.
Thin, shallow areas or heavy triggers are what will set this layer off. Avoid terrain with those characteristics.
Numerous loose dry avalanche up to sz 1 on all aspects but no new slab avalanche activity was noted.
10-13cm fell overnight on Friday giving a nice reset to the region. This new snow has seen very little wind and as such, not much for new windslab development was observed. How this new snow bonds to the crust will be important to consider. We now have multiple crusts on solar aspects, and more are expected to come as spring continues. Dig down on these aspects and check this interface. A fracture line profile was done today on a possible skier triggered sz 3 avalanche from a few days ago in the Murray Moraines drainage on a N aspect at 2200m. The failure layer was a layer of facets/depth hoar down 100cm. This layer was producing moderate sudden collapses. Also the propagation on this layer was over 200m. This layer has been noted in snow profiles throughout the region and rockies so be sure to dig down before committing to a feature. The slope that avalanched took out and buried numerous ski lines. Forecasters are still avoiding being on any steeper or large features due to high levels of uncertainty within the snowpack.
Sunday will be much like Saturday with a few cm of new snow forecast from convective flurries and winds will continue to be light out of the north. Temperatures will be around -4C during the peak of the day but that can quickly change when the sun comes out and solar radiation intensifies on the solar aspects.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
