I was working in Manning Park most of the last 12 days with Canada West Mountain School/DND, Vancouver School Boards TREK program
We skied off the ski hill up Grassy Mountain and up Cambie and Fat Dog Creeks. Elevation Ranges from 1200m-1850m. Temperatures where down to a cool -25 /-30 a few of the mornings.
The snow pack ranges in depth from 40cm in the Valley bottoms up to about 100cm at ridge top.
I didn't see any recent avalanche activity.
A couple of pits at 1600m/1850m showed a faceting snowpack. The bottom third was composed of a well settled 1F snow (probably previously rain saturated crust, which is now faceting) above this was loose 4F/F snow. There appeard to be a thin layer of surface hoar buried about 20cm from the surface (161211sh) but I couldn't get any test results on this probably due to the loose unsupportive snowpack.
At the higher elevations the snow pack depth is enough and ski quality is quite good.
Dave Sarkany