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Ymir

Selkirks

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Alp

Tln

Btl

April pow

Published: Apr 15th, 2026

Great snow up high. Got heavier around 1700m, but overall great riding. No signs of instability noted - although wind and snowfall picked up as we were dropping. Some sloughing on steeper sections at high elevations. Lots of faceshots. What a treat!

North side of Evening Ridge

Published: Apr 4th, 2026

Saw some 1 naturals on South aspect on way up. Skied North side of Evening Ridge (off Hummingbird). 1895m there was 36cm fresh above a relatively supportive crust. Below the crust there were some facets and a second, thick crust went down from 55 to more than 70cm. HS 265cm. Two CT easy (8) at 36 and 45 (RP) but below 55cm, it was a bomber crust. PF was about 40cm so the skiing was good, dry fresh snow. Alternatively, on the route back to the base on the south side it was “active” (read “spicy”)… I think I ski cut an entire traverse from W to E. Only about 5cm of wet, heavy slow at a time but it slid at least ¾ path on each cut (each slide was a .5 to 1, depending on how far I cut). Sluffs were slow but heavy and I could see how this could take someone off their skis for a bit of a ride. The sluffs were sliding on a M/F crust that once exposed was grippy and actually quite nice to ski. Lower elevation, less steep was creamy and fun by about noon. I saw facets about 40cm down between the two crust layers. Below 45cm, the snow was bomber - I could not get anything to move.

5Mile

Published: Mar 28th, 2026

Skied 5 mile and Keututl today. Variable wind transported snow depths above the ice crust. 5 mile made for reasonably good skiing while avoiding the wind scoured areas. Keututl was more warmth and sun affected leading to grabby snow. Breaking trail in the soft snow over the crust on steep slopes was not great. Ski crampons a must.

Evening ridge

Published: Mar 13th, 2026

Field Observation Summary Plan: The initial objective was to ski Whales Back. While traveling along Evening Ridge, we observed shooting cracks, indicating potential slab instability. Based on these red flags, the group reassessed the plan and chose a lower-consequence east-facing treed slope for skiing instead. Test Location: Aspect: East Slope angle: 32° Elevation: ~1950 m Terrain: Open test area within treed slope HS (Height of Snowpack): 258 cm Multiple Compression Test (snow stability test) were performed. Compression Test Results CTE 3 Failure at 15 cm Interface: Buried surface hoar within storm snow Character: Easy failure, indicating high sensitivity in the recent storm slab. CTM 12 Failure at 40 cm Interface: February 15 crust Suggests a developing slab over the crust layer. CTM 14 Failure at 102cm Interface: January 28 crust Sudden planar Terrain Decision Given the instability indicators and test results, the group chose to avoid committing alpine terrain (Whales Back) and instead skied a lower-angle, treed east-facing slope to reduce avalanche exposure.

5 Mile Creek

Published: Mar 4th, 2026

Went for a walk in the 5 mile creek zone today. Around 10 cm of new snow didn’t stay dry for long. Day was warm and the greenhouse was in full effect. Snow was moist on a north aspect up to ridgetop at 2200 m. We had no notable results in our test profile, but we were still treating the terrain with caution because we remain suspicious of the snowpack structure in the area. Turns were creamy up top, but quickly changed to pin wheels around 1900 m. All in all, a nice day out in the W. Koots.

Beattie Conditions Change

Published: Mar 1st, 2026

No signs of instability but sun crust on west slope above 1800m. Conditions were much better (silky powder)below 1800m

Cougars Claw, Whitewater Ski Resort Backcountry

Published: Feb 28th, 2026

Remote Trigger sz 2.5

Published: Feb 27th, 2026

Winds light to moderate from the W-NW through the day, with continual flurries bringing 5cm of accumulation. Sheltered slopes skied well, while sun exposed slopes had a breakable crust covered by 5-15cm of recent snow. Noticed many large whumpfs while skinning through low angle meadows and sheltered areas at ridgetop. Triggered a size 1.5 windslab on a NE aspect at 2000m while kicking snow off ridgetop. With further stomping at ridgetop we remote-triggered a size 2.5 persistent slab on the same slope. Impressive propagation for feature, likely failing on the Feb 14 surface hoar layer down 40cm. A good day for a conservative day out there, conditions warrant a lot of respect right now.

5 Mile Basin Spatial Variability

Published: Feb 22nd, 2026

Went for an explore around 5 Mile basin after experiencing poor visibility and high winds the day before. Planning to ski Larch peak but the south west aspect was heavily wind affected. A wind crust (up to 5cm) sat on top of 20 to 25cm of powder. All supported on a 3-5cm crust. Upper snowpack would fail on the crust once unsupported during hand shears. Upper snowpack would crack at ski track turns. Decided to not ski Larch seeing the conditions and carried on up to Embla peak where the snow was unconsolidated powder on the North and North west aspects. East face of Embla was ankle deep pow once off the ridge. Bowl between Embla and Enma was deep fluffy pow that felt untouched from the recent wind. Skied a west aspect back into 5 Mile Basin, which had been badly affected by the wind until we hit treeline.

Evening Ridge

Published: Feb 22nd, 2026

Toured up to pillowland from Glory lot. Lots of whumpfing and settling lower down (1400-1700m). Conditions improved above 1700. Found the avalanche in the other min near the top of the ridge. Snow near top of ridge was a little wind/sun affected. Conditions best between 1700-2000m. Light snow began in afternoon and winds were generally light throughout the day.

Persistent Layer Triggered by Heavy Loading

Published: Feb 21st, 2026

Cracks in 5-Mile

Published: Feb 21st, 2026

Cloud cover and increasing winds moved into Five Mile Basin today, reducing visibility and affecting the snow surface. Wind-affected snow was present above ~2000 m, with up to 5 cm of newly formed wind board in exposed areas. We observed several easily propagating shooting cracks at various elevations above 2000 m. Slabs were relatively thin and not producing large cohesive blocks, but cracking indicated reactive wind slabs. We adjusted terrain accordingly and travelled in more wind-protected areas for the remainder of the day.

Turns and Burns but better

Published: Feb 21st, 2026

Great day out in Five Mile basin - lovely conditions with reasonable sluffing given the unconsolidated storm snow. No notable signs of instability observed. Lots of folks out today.

Moby Dick? Not quite.

Published: Feb 21st, 2026

Didn't lose our leg to Whale's Back this time, but we were looking for vengeance after being robbed of the blower pow we were hoping for. Still, surfy turns were had and the day wasn't a total waste. Snowpack investigation indicated there are still monsters out there lurking in the deep (or not-so-deep, with regards to breakable sun crust). Keep yer wits about ya, matey!

5 Mile Basin

Published: Feb 20th, 2026

The only red flag was one single Whumpf at 5 Mile Valley Bottom.

Whoomph

Published: Feb 15th, 2026

At the flat top of lower Evening Ridge, caused a large settling that we could hear and see. No real instabilities noticed on our ride down, just some sluffing. On our sunny uptrack, noticed the snow separating from the crust underneath easily.

Size 3 Skier Remote failing on Jan 28th.

Published: Feb 16th, 2026

Turns and burns

Published: Feb 15th, 2026

Great day out in Five Mile basin. Conditions seemed stable with good quality riding, however notable whumpfing while transitioning at bottom of basin. 10-15 cms on a stable crust with not too much sun affect on NW aspect slopes. Mixed sun and cloud but overall a bluebird day.

White queen

Published: Feb 14th, 2026

Nice skiing, no instability noted while skiing, but test hand shears produced very clean failures of cohesive slabs about 50 cm deep with moderate shoulder taps at about 2100 m, NE to E aspects. New snow seems to be consolidating with very poor bond to the Jan rain crust.

Love can make you dumb

Published: Feb 13th, 2026

Went for a back country date for vday and lost awareness and focus. Triggered a size 1 dropping a feature on the back side of Ecstasy. The top 10cm layer slid on the crust ,crown was about 20m with a 10cm depth and nobody got caught. Top of the snow was faceted. We noticed snow drift on top of the ridge and cross loading of snow in the slope we wanted to drop in when making our way to our dropping point. Being preoccupied with visibility, we missed the assessment of what we wanted to ski and talking about how what we saw would affect reactivity of the snow and the convex shape of the dropping zone. Afterwards, we skied the trees SE and found crust and softer snow in more sheltered area.

WOW - We found POW!

Published: Feb 12th, 2026

Sometimes, you have to go far to find those fresh lines. Great day in the 5 Mile Basin backcountry. No signs of recent avalanche activity and no crust. Lucky.

Upper goatslide report

Published: Feb 11th, 2026

- Sizeable surface hoar on upper goatslide (~1cm) - day started at -5 degrees, warmed up significantly by 12pm to around 3-4 degrees - stomped on top of a convex feature, no notable reactions, but some sluffing

Evening Ridge North east aspect (Nice n Easy)

Published: Feb 9th, 2026

Nice and smooth. Super crusty near the trees.

Little slab behind workshop

Published: Feb 8th, 2026

Small 15cm slab behind the workshop. Happened at some point earlier on Sunday. Partly overcast night with some frost starting to form

The Nose / Evening Ridge

Published: Feb 8th, 2026

shooting cracks along the ridge on selous pass, then whumpfing on our way back to Evening Ridge. we kept it conservative. the snow felt best on mellow slopes anyway. i reckon it was still safer than being on the Whitewater (slick) access road with all the 2WD drivers 😎

West Ymir Wiggles and Whumpfs

Published: Feb 8th, 2026

Fun skiing in Westies dodging frozen chunks of old debris from warming cycle. Almost like a slalom course! Shooting cracks and whumpfing noted on backside of Prospector during travel.

Weak over weak over weak

Published: Feb 6th, 2026

Interesting snowpack results on Friday. Some failures above the January crust on surface hoar, and some below it in facets - see picture. In some places the crust is weakening. Extended column test produced mostly easy results that propagated quickly. Also noticed the overlying slab is quite variable depending on aspect (exposure to sun). Our main concern was steep open slopes below treeline with terrain traps. Definitely a weakness to keep an eye on as it gets buried...

Silver King Ridge

Published: Feb 3rd, 2026

The day ended there.

Evening Ridge - Touchy Storm Slabs

Published: Jan 31st, 2026

Skied a very mellow program on the east facing slopes behind Evening Ridge. Up to 20cm of recent storm snow (4F) overlies the Jan 28th surface hoar and melt freeze crust. This new snow is reactive to skier traffic in steeper terrain and convex features below treeline and I suspect it would be on all aspects BTL and at TL. The bond between the new snow and the SH/MFcr is poor to non-existent. We gave anything over 25 degrees a hard pass today given the touchy conditions. Multiple natural size 1's on all aspects TL/BTL propagating up to 20m in prominent features such as the Whale's Back and Evening Ridge North. On our ski out via a southerly aspect, surface snow was moist below 1800m with temp sitting at 0 at 1800m.

January 31 st 5 mile

Published: Jan 31st, 2026

Storm slab very reactive. Fracture easy with small propagation. Storm slab had not bonded at all.

Cornice Cracking

Published: Jan 17th, 2026

Great skiing in the afternoon noon on souths thanks to the inversion and sun.

Corn on the Queen

Published: Jan 17th, 2026

Despite cold temps in the valley, we found soft supportable snow on the top 250m of White Queen. As we descended in elevation, the snow became semi-supportable making for challenging skiing conditions. Anything that was not full sun was very firm or breakable crust.

Reactive wind slab

Published: Jan 11th, 2026

Bird Queen

Published: Jan 11th, 2026

Skinned up to bird Queen and rode down to the XC trails. Choose to stay in the trees and avoided convex rolls at the top of the ridge. Snow was great, light pow with a thin crust under 20cm starting at 1700m ish. No signs of avalanche activity on our route

Lower Razor's Edge

Published: Jan 7th, 2026

Sherpa peak and SE face

Published: Jan 6th, 2026

We decided to keep it simple with the forecast and rode into some fairly dense trees SE of Sherpa peak, before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort and hiked back out! Hand shears around 2000m showed a weak layer of surface hoar about 20cm down getting more buried as the day went on. Came back into resort above the trash traverse where snow was not too wind affected but again had a clear SH layer on SW aspect. Stay safe out there! It’s looking spicy for the next little while :)

Rider beware, there are storm slabs out there!

Published: Jan 6th, 2026

Took a stormy stroll up Prospector today to check things out. During the skin we noted shooting cracks triggered by body weight as well as by deep pole strikes. There has also been significant wind loading along the ridge and we were able to release small cornices with single pole strikes above open faces. Due to these observations we chose to stick to treed slopes and move slowly, skiing off the N/NE aspect of Prospector. The photos were taken skiers right of the Knifes Edge at the top of Prospector where we released multiple small slabs as we ski cut our way to lower angle terrain where things were much more stable and enjoyable!

Five mile basin

Published: Dec 30th, 2025

Rode 5 mile basin today, about 30cm off powder on a supportive crust made for perfect riding. No signs of instability even on the steepest slopes in the basin.

Small windslabs

Published: Dec 28th, 2025

Couple of small rider trigered wind slabs from blasters ridge at whitewater. There was 3-4 different ones but didn’t get pictures.

Black Queen Cold Smoke

Published: Dec 27th, 2025

Conditions were deep, blower and stable in the Black Queen and Acidophilus area. Trail breaking back up was the price of admission. Snow Profile (ECT & CT) 11:50am 2095m elevation 20 degrees SSE aspect ECTX 12:05pm 2095m elevation 20 degrees SSE aspect CTH4 RP @ 63cm down Density (Top 108cm of snowpack) 26cm F (Storm snow) 20cm 4F (Settled storm snow) 36cm 1F (Settled dense snow with decomposing crust layer 52cm down) 3cm Facets (Above rain crust) 3cm Pencil (rain crust) 20cm 1F (Settled old snow)

Evening Ridge walk

Published: Dec 24th, 2025

The good news is; the alders are pretty much covered. The bad news is; it’s heavy, wet, and 2*C in treeline. Consistent rain today. Snow was dense and very sticky on the ascent and descent. I like my knees more than skiing on a day like today. Where’s La Niña?! Trees were shedding snow rapidly and lots of wet rollerballs.

POW Queen

Published: Dec 23rd, 2025

Picture of test pit results attached which was dug in Black Queen. Quality of riding was amazing blower pow in Black Queen and the run down White Queen back to the resort side. Could ride confidently in steep terrain with sluff being the main concern. Still quite scratchy as you reach the cat track at the bottom of white queen.

Raven ridge

Published: Dec 21st, 2025

Just up the lift to SK/Raven ridge and over for a lap into 5 mile basin. First steep turns off the top were definitely sluffy on the unconsolidated storm snow, Otherwise, no sign of cracks/slabs. The storm snow was classic kootenay coldsmoke pretty much to valley bottom. Although still a few obstacles/blowdown to dodge as you lose elevation below the bench. But a great and welcome reset!

Black Queen stable pow

Published: Dec 20th, 2025

Much better than expected snow quality on Black Queen. Some soft wind slab in some locations, but great skiing, could really ski with confidence on steep slopes. Stable snow, see the snowpack report.

Cloudy day in prospector south

Published: Jan 14th, 2025

A great day with low winds and low vis. We skinned up to prospector summit and then down through some quite dense trees to the south. Headed back up towards hummingbird and a second lap through some better spaced trees and then out via blasters ridge/catch. Snow was feeling excellent in the top 50-70cm but didn’t dig a pit so no observations below that. No sign of wind slab anywhere below the ridge line and no crusts in the snow we could feel. No observed avalanches. Great skiing and we saw two flying squirrels!

Lots of wet slides

Published: Mar 30th, 2024

Saw a bunch of skier and sluffing wet snow triggered avalanches size 1 to 1.5 on the lowest steep pitch in keututl. We stopped just short of the last pitch once observed. Weather was very sunny in the morning, top 2/3 of the run was nice powder but transitioned quickly to wet storm slabs at around 1950 m. Sun went behind clouds around 12-12:30 for the rest of the day. NW and W aspects did not show the same wet snow in the afternoon.

Dust on Crust

Published: Mar 27th, 2024

Quick lap of Whitequeen. Some new light snow made for dust on hard crust conditions. Not good conditions, but a nice walk. Rocks and stumps have been melting out quickly making for interesting routes down.

Whitewater Slackcountry

Published: Mar 13th, 2024

Saw this avalanche whilst hopping off raven chair doing some resort laps at whitewater today. Saw some tracks around 200m to lookers right of the slide from the same day on a similar slope. Can visibly see where the storm slab drops down to the buried weak layer, not too sure how it was triggered, possibly a sluff slide/cornice drop from solar aspect.

Endless Evening Ridge Crown

Published: Mar 8th, 2024

I don’t recall ever seeing such an extensive set of crowns along Evening Ridge. Most major open slopes have run down to valley borrow, notably Evening Peak and Whale’s Back. Thought it was worth sharing a photo.

Whitewater/Kpass

Published: Feb 23rd, 2024

Great last 3 days (21-23) around Five Mile, Qua and the Crags North at Kootenay Pass (I didn't want to make 3 reports haha) Snow stayed great above 1800m all 3 days. Below that elevation the snow was definitely dense and warm. A couple observations of note; Friday (23rd) everything that was moist during the previous 2 days was in the process of freezing by the end of the day. Getting into Qua is not currently recommended, low snow pack, open creeks and very sub optimal conditions. Fresh lines are becoming trickier to find due to limited options for good skiing due to freezing levels and terrain options. And North facing terrain is holding the snow very well above 1800m (very limited wind effect) and is skiing worlds better than anything that has been kissed by the sun recently. Have fun everybody

Spring Conditions

Spring Conditions

Spring Conditions

Avalanche Forecast

Published: Apr 27th, 2026

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Published: Apr 24th, 2026

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Published: Apr 23rd, 2026

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Published: Apr 22nd, 2026

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Published: Apr 21st, 2026

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Published: Apr 20th, 2026

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Published: Apr 19th, 2026

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Published: Apr 18th, 2026

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Published: Apr 17th, 2026

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Published: Apr 16th, 2026

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Published: Apr 15th, 2026

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Published: Apr 14th, 2026

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Published: Apr 13th, 2026

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Published: Apr 12th, 2026

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Published: Apr 3rd, 2026

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Published: Apr 2nd, 2026

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Published: Apr 1st, 2026

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Published: Mar 31st, 2026

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Published: Mar 30th, 2026

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Published: Mar 29th, 2026

Avalanche Forecast

Published: Mar 29th, 2026

Southridge

BC Ministry of Transportation & Infrastructure