Regional Summaries

It's been an interesting week for mountain conditions. The week started off cold and wintery and now we've got a sneak peak at spring with high winds and warming temperatures. While I was skiing up at Highwood Pass two days ago the snow below 2100 m was moist, and the occasional loose avalanche triggered by warming could be seen in steep terrain. Snow on shaded aspects above 2100 m was still dry. But of course it isn't spring. The snowpack is very, very thin still.

Well, now we've gone from fall to winter in much of the forecast area! Although the different weather forecast models don't agree on precipitation amounts, the one thing that is clear is that conditions in the alpine will be very winter-like.

We are fully in a period of transition back to winter in the alpine now. Temps could be as low as -10 at 3500m and a dusting of snow today and Saturday, with the sun making an appearance again on Sunday and sticking around for most of next week.

Summer is back in the valleys and South faces up to treeline but in the High shady places there are some transitions going on.

Last weekends snow is to be expected to linger on the glaciers, North facing alpine and probably just to the West and East of North in the alpine. Even in the trees in Kananaskis country this week it was slow to leave shaded glades below treeline and there were remnant small cornice above 2800m.

The left over issues will be some wet alpine rock, morning verglas, the new small cornices and the possibility of weak skinny bridges over crevasses.