We spent the last 6 days skiing out of the Valkyr Range in southern B.C with Valkyr Adventures. We had excellent ski conditions with about 50cm of new snow through the week, cool temperatures and little wind effect. The new snow bonded well with previous surfaces and we saw little in the way of new avalanche activity. Some sluffing on steep North aspects, and solar triggered sluffing and a couple thin slabs up to size 1.5 on steep South aspects when it got sunny. We started the week very cautiously but were able to step out into steeper terrain as the week progressed. We were conscious of sticking to areas with a thicker snow pack and well supported terrain.
There are still several layers of crusts and facets buried within the top 1m of the snow pack which produced sudden shears in the hard range and showed potential to propagate with a large enough trigger. South aspects seemed the worst for this, while North aspects had fewer layers and showed harder test results overall.
Spring is slowly arriving with melt freeze crusts developing below 1500 meters and isothermal snow developing below 1200m. Sun crust on solar aspects, and good powder skiing on North aspects down to 1500m!
Cheers, Conrad JanzenIFMGA Mountain Guide
www.conradjanzenguiding.com