Hi all,

We just finished an excellent stormy 4day backcountry base camp in the Serpentine Lake area of the Southern Selkirks. This sweet zone is located southwest of Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park between the headwaters of Nilsik creek and Kokanee creek. It boast an incredible array of interesting terrain for your skiing pleasures. We access our basecamp (1975m) by helicopter and skied in & out of the park on various day tours between 2550m and 1450m from Feb 28th to March 3rd. The weather started off sunny and cold on Feb 28th but quickly deteriorated to a stormy pattern with significant snowfall and progressively warmer temperatures. On March 1st, the first storm wave gifted us with 50cm of new overnight Kootenay cold smoke and very little wind with temperatures in the -10C range. Needless to say, the skiing was outstanding that day and so was the trail breaking. March 2nd brought another 20cm of slightly denser snow with freezing levels creeping up to about 900m. Today March 3rd we got another 10cm of much denser snow with rising freezing levels and moderate southwesterly winds.

The average snowpack depth at treeline in the area was about 350cm. Test profiles in the area over the period showed consistent easy shears in the storm snow interfaces and hard resistant shears down 70cm. With the rising freezing level, today we notice more reactivity on this layer below treeline. This storm slab will likely continue to become more reactive with current forecast. Of note, significant cornice growth was observed this week. There was an ongoing storm snow avalanche cycle during our time there. The new soft snow was cracking and sloughing easily on itself to size 2 on most unsupported treeline and below treeline terrain steeper than 35 deg. Skiing similar terrain easily produced chocking face shots along with fast sloughing. As the storm lost some intensity and the temperatures started rising, sloughing became more manageable. Today the main concern was the developing storm slab, we observed shooting crack and whumpfs in select areas below treeline. While skiing out, we saw several larger avalanche debris running nearly full path out of some of the steeper paths along the Kokanee road.

A great way to ease into March!

Cheers,

David Lussier
acmg mountain guide
www.summitmountainguides.com