Avalanche Forecast
Avalanche Forecasts are for use by experienced backcountry travelers in uncontrolled sidecountry and backcountry terrain. These forecasts and conditions do not apply to open, in-bounds terrain at ski resorts, which is subject to avalanche control by local resort ski patrol.
Avalanche Rating
Considerable (3)
Continue to choose conservative terrain giving the storm snow time to settle and bond.
More Detail
To get the complete forecast with additional graphics and details, please view the Avalanche Canada Zone forecast provided by Avalanche Canada.
Snowpack Discussion
Up to 40 cm of recent storm snow combined with moderate to strong westerly winds have built reactive storm slabs in the region. The most snow fell in the northern and central parts of the region, with less in the Barkerville, McBride and Kakwa areas.
The storm snow is covering a variety of surfaces that may take a while to bond. These include old wind-affected snow, hard crusts, facets, and surface hoar.
We continue to track early January and early December surface hoar and crust layers down 30 to 60 cm and 80 to 150 cm, respectively. Both are considered unlikely to trigger.
Avalanche Activity
On Wednesday, a large (size 2.5) wind slab failing on a crust occurred in steep wind-loaded east-facing terrain in the McGregors. Several smaller but similar wind slabs were triggered by riders in the same area on Tuesday.
The field team was also able to trigger small slabs on surface hoar and witnessed shooting cracks in the Pine Pass area. See photos below.