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Backcountry Advisory

As of Wednesday, April 6

Alpine: HIGH

Treeline: HIGH

Below Treeline: CONSIDERABLE

Travel Advisory: An ongoing series of low pressure systems will continue to bring snow to our area. Windloading into lee and crossloaded areas is building variable slabs with some exposed areas being scoured to the early March crust. Finally, even on stormy days, the sun can affect the surface forming thin temperature glazes.

Avalanche Activity: Explosive and ski testing is resulting in easily triggered slab avalanches to size two. Some skier-triggered releases have been occurring after explosives tests produced no result, or with the third skier. Solar exposed slopes have buried temperature crusts that are resulting in wide propagation of surface slabs. Rapidly growing cornices are likely to fail and could also trigger the deeper weaknesses.

Snowpack: The early March melt-freeze crust/facet weakness is buried down 1 to 1.5 metres in most areas, while in more wind exposed terrain it can be found on the surface. Ongoing new snow loading over this deep weakness may begin to cause it to fail, resulting in deep slab avalanches, especially if we get a rapidly increasing freezing level. There are thin ice lenses buried within the storm snow on solar aspects that have been reactive to both explosive and ski testing this week.

Weather: Continued stormy weather with a fairly southerly flow is expected to maintain moderate to heavy precipitation rates through this week and into the weekend, while the possibility of some warmer temperatures looms.