Avalanche Forecast
Kananaskis Country, Alberta Parks
Up to 20cm of new over the past 24hrs. Good skiing in sheltered areas but conservative choices are a must right now. Give the new snow a few days to stabilize.
Avalanche Problem 1: Wind Slabs
What Elevation?
Which Slopes?
Chances of Avalanches?
Expected Size?
Travel and Terrain Advice
- Be careful with wind loaded pockets, especially near ridge crests and roll-overs.
- Avoid steep lee and cross-loaded slopes
- Be aware of the potential for wide propagations due to the presence of hard windslabs.
Avalanche Problem 2: Persistent Slabs
What Elevation?
Which Slopes?
Chances of Avalanches?
Expected Size?
Numerous buried weak layers are causing some concern at Treeline. Avalanche activity observed in the past 3 days initiated in the upper snowpack and then steeped down to the persistent slabs.
Travel and Terrain Advice
- Carefully evaluate terrain features by digging and testing on adjacent, safe slopes.
- Avoid convex rolls at and below treeline where buried surface hoar may be preserved.
Avalanche Problem 3: Loose Dry
What Elevation?
Which Slopes?
Chances of Avalanches?
Expected Size?
Loose dry slides out of steep unskiable terrain. These slides may trigger slabs on udnerlying slopes.
Travel and Terrain Advice
- Sluffs may trigger deeper instabilities.
Avalanche Summary
Observations were limited due to snowfalls throughout the day. There were reports from groups in the Black prince area of avalanches up to sz 2 coming from eastern windloaded aspects. They were suspected to be loose dry slides but running far into below treeline areas. We suspect more avalanche occurred today but we just couldnt see them due to the obscured conditions.
Snowpack Summary
Up to 20cm of snow over the past 24hrs at treeline elevations. Winds continue out of the west into the moderate range with occasional gusts into the strong range. This recent snow is burying and adding additional load to the previous windslabs that were overlying a weak facetted layer known as the dec 15th down around 1m. At treeline and below there are a few surface hoar layers of concern within the top 1m of the snowpack. Dec 15th SH is down generally 1m, Jan 6th down around 70cm and Jan 18th down 35cm (all depths approx). These layers are slowly becomming more reactive as successive snow loads bury them. This is a good time to stick to conservative terrain and let the snowpack adjust to this new load.
Weather Forecast
Winds will continue to be out of the west in the moderate range on Friday with no new snow expected. Temperatres on Friday are expected to be around -10C in the Alpine.
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New snow is adding to previous windslabs and creating thin new ones. Any windslabs that fail may step down to the December interface causing a large avalanche.