From March 17 - 22, I skied with a group in the Little Yoho valley area, as part of a trip with Sawback Alpine Adventures.

We generally had unsettled weather with broken skies, intermittent flurries, and moderate wind from the west. We often observed plumes of snow being transported at ridge crests, particularly on Thursday & Friday (March 20-21). Yesterday (March 22) we observed several fresh looking avalanches with impressive propagation in steep, wind loaded alpine terrain, up to size 2.5, possibly size 3.

There is plenty of evidence of an old avalanche cycle that occurred during & after the big storm March 8-9, but the cycle wasn't widespread, and nothing appears to have failed on deeper layers in the snowpack. This area seems to have received less snow during this storm, with ~40-50cm since March 8.

The snowpack here is generally deeper, less faceted, and more stable than areas to the east. However, there are still many features that were heavily faceted prior to the March 8-9 storm, and now have a slab sitting overtop. On one occasion, we experienced a large whumpf and shooting crack on a small moraine feature. The snowpack is not trustworthy & we were skiing with a lot of caution in areas where we weren't certain about the snow structure.

We spent one day going up the glacier on Mt McArthur and found an average of 300cm on the ice. In the crevassed roll midway up, we found as little as 40cm in one location. Generally the snow doesn't have a lot of resistance and we didn't have a ton of confidence in the strength of crevasses bridges.

Happy spring!