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)
Tricky is the word. The snow pack is not to be trusted. Don't let the allure of fresh powder lead you into avalanche terrain. Simple, low angle, unconnected terrain and good group management are key components to a safe day at the moment.
More Detail
To get the complete forecast with additional graphics and details, please view the Kananaskis Zone forecast provided by Kananaskis.
Snowpack Discussion
5cm overnight adds to a significant snowfall event over the last 5 days. New snow heights vary between 60cm-100cm. Winds have been very light. This snow is settling rapidly with the warmer temps. This new snow is overlying a crust from early March on the solar aspects and a mixture of facets and hard windslabs on more polar aspects. Windslabs have developed within the recent snow 10-30cm thick that are reactive to skier traffic. Deeper in the snowpack the problematic Jan 30th facet interface is down 60-90cm and commonly producing sudden collapse sheers at this interface. A failure in the windslabs will likely step down to the Jan30th interface. Conservative terrain choices that avoid being attached to a bigger piece of terrain is the way to go right now. Forecasters are sticking to low angle, well supported terrain only.
Avalanche Activity
Sz 2.5 Skier accidental avalanche in the Black Prince area on a North East Facing slope at 2200m. The avalanche occurred in 35+ deg terrain and appearred to have failed on the Jan 30th interface down 1m deep in places. The avalanche was 100m wide and ran down into thick timber. One skier was involved.
Continued evidence of last weeks cycle with avalanche up to sz 3 are being observed. 2 new Sz 2 windslabs were observed in the Murrays Twins area initiating in a steeper SE alpine feature.
Two skiers reported a Skier accidental sz 1.5 avalanche to the south of black prince on a south east aspect treeline feature around 2300m. The suspected bed layer for this avalanche was the Jan30th interface.