South Rockies

The best and safest riding may be in sheltered terrain around tree line.

Moderate - Due to the number of field observations

Thursday: Mix of sun and cloud / Light south wind / Alpine temperature -14Friday: Cloudy with sunny breaks and isolated flurries / Light southwest wind / Alpine temperature -5Saturday: Flurries / Moderate to strong southwest wind / Alpine temperatures of about -4More details can be found on the Mountain Weather Forecast.

No new avalanches have been reported. The main concern continues to be the possibility of triggering the weak faceted layers deeper in the snowpack. Ongoing moderate to strong wind at upper elevations has created thin fresh wind slabs reactive to human triggering .

Any of the new snow that fell last week has been redistributed over previous hard, wind-affected surfaces forming additional thin layers of wind slab in lee terrain at higher elevations. Below 1500 metres you may find an isolated thin breakable rain crust about 1 cm thick. The snowpack is quite variable throughout the region. In deeper snowpack areas, the snowpack appears to be well settled with isolated concerns about the mid-December facet layer buried 50-100 cm deep. In shallow snowpack areas and lower elevations, the snowpack is weak and faceted. For instance, in the Elk Valley north area near Crown Mountain last week the height of snow was 90 cm with foot penetration of 80 cm; or almost to ground. In these areas, the wind has formed isolated hard slabs above weak facets and created the potential for large persistent slab avalanches.