Avalanche Canada Wasn’t Joking When They Said High Avalanche conditions

Renshaw, McBride Lots of avalanche activity around. Where we rode today, saw three recent slides. 1 of them being a substantial size. The other 2 were cornices breaking off of small leeward slopes (very little runout as the mellow slope didn’t allow for a long runout). Very windy up in the alpine from the southwest. Approx 2.5’ of powder had fallen in the past few days. Yesterday, riding quality was absolutely amazingly with the fresh powder. Today with the wind, started becoming wind affected especially in open alpine terrain. Substantial wind cross loading observed. Because of the high avalanche conditions and activity around, we chose conservative terrain which was open bowls and mellow slopes.

Observed a recent avalanche from the morning. Fresh snowmobile tracks were at the runout zone. The slide covered half those tracks. Photo 1 was taken at 6500ft. The face was west facing. Substantial wind from the SW. Approx 2.5’ of powder had fallen in the area over the past few days on top of a hard wind affect slab (was in the same area last week).

Quick probe of the snow where we were stopped. Started the probe probe below the fresh powder 2.5’ of fresh powder that had fallen over the past few days. 270cm probe still didn’t touch the bottom….