Moderate westerly winds will continue to move snow through the weekend. Expect small, easily triggered slabs on gully walls and steep leeward slopes. Otherwise, the incoming light flurries will improve riding quality, and many sheltered areas still hold soft snow.
Residual wind slabs and crusty, wind-affected snow remain, but the recent winds have also refreshed the skiing in spots. With light weekend flurries on the way, watch for fresh thin windslabs forming - especially along and west of the Continental Divide, where snowfall will be greater.
LLSA’s explosive work on steep lee NE alpine terrain produced unexpected results: two shots triggered size 2 wind slabs that propagated about 75 m, up to 40 cm deep, and ran roughly 300 m. Smaller slabs triggered with explosives and some travelled farther than anticipated (SSV). It's suspected a thin mid-pack melt-freeze crust aided both propagation and runout.
On Thursday, a size 3 cornice failure off Crowfoot Mountain dropped over the glacier and into the moraines.
The winds continue to affect the snow surface. The windslabs created through the week are up to 40 cm thick. Small windloaded features have been triggered. A rain crust exists in the middle of the snowpack, which may be starting to become reactive based on explosive control results on Friday by SSV & LLSA.
At treeline and below, the snow quality remains generally soft, despite the wind, with a relatively strong mid-pack and no significant weak layers.
The strong westerly flow is expected to continue for the weekend. This means a blustery few days with continued moderate west winds (30-40 km/hr), light amounts of snow (2-5 cm/day) and temperatures steady in the -5 to -10 range. In the longer term, more significant precipitation appears to be on the horizon for Monday and Tuesday of next week. Fingers crossed.
