Windy and snowing

southrockies , Thursday 29th February, 2024 4:10PM

Out at Atlas today, north of Crowsnest pass, there was a lot of new snow and strong to extreme wind moving it all around at treeline and above. We had a great time carving turns on the road into the cabin. As we got up towards treeline the wind was bending big trees and obscuring visibility with the snow it was transporting. So we decided to head back down to safe meadows, far from overhead avalanche terrain. Only got glimpses into the alpine, but didn't see any avalanches. The snow line was about 1600 m during the day, rain in the carpark, snow above. We dug a snowpit at 2000 m and had a very easy failure underneath the storm snow, 25 cm deep.