Hoping this finds Everyone enjoying some good skiing in the hills these days.
Toured into Steep Creek today and found some beautiful skiing in the trees. The tracksetting was good through forested terrain in 20-25cm of dry snow.
The snow that fell, during the storm that began Januray 4th, has remained cold and dry, and has settled into a soft-slab. There is approximately 35cm of this storm snow sitting above a layer of weak 'surface hoar'. Testing of this layer in an open treeline location on a west-southwest facing slope revealed that the 'surface hoar' has not gained much strength at all in the past week. Tests demonstrated that there continues to be a likelihood of this layer releasing whole slopes, in prone terrain, if triggered.
This weakness in the upper snowpack is at a depth that can currently be easily skier-triggered. Additional signs of instabililty today included some loud 'whumpfing' sounds in an open treeline meadow and one large natural avalanche that our group heard originating from the north-facing side of the valley on a steep, lee, and alpine feature well above Darkside Lake.
Consider that some snow, with surface-hoar buried beneath, can slide on quite low-angle terrain, if the weakness is triggered. Consider your position in the terrain and beware of any looming slopes above. Sometimes, surface-hoar can be triggered from relatively level terrain and run upslope until it reaches terrain that will slide.
The skies were progressively thickening all day today and the mountains were becoming more and more obscured, this afternoon, as this next weather system began settling in.
The forecast strong winds overnight tonight and additional snowfall will begin raising the hazard-level further....
Wishing you safe travels and best regards,
Dale Marcoux
ACMG Ski Guide