100 km/h wind in Crowsnest

southrockies , Friday 10th January, 2025 5:15PM

The soft snow is officially done, especially up high. The extreme wind has stripped the alpine and transported snow far downslope into sheltered treeline and below treeline terrain. We found wind slab at every elevation band. For the most part the wind slab is only 10 to 15 cm in depth which made for some very challenging skiing. We are suspicious of isolated terrain features in the alpine where hard wind slab has formed over faceted snow from last weeks cold temperatures. At treeline elevation, the wind slab is breakable and cracking so steep trees were on our radar for sneaky instabilities.