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A dozen of us spent April 12-19 on a little ski "vacation" in Frisby Creek, which is a few drainages north of Revelstoke in the Monashee mountains.
We had unsettled weather the entire time, with a sunny day temperature spike to mountain top followed by a rain event almost to treeline early on, and fairly continuous convective snowfalls and a couple of major wind events mid to late week. There was 30-50 cm of storm snow in alpine areas by the end of the week, although with quite variable distribution due to the wind. Lower elevations had significantly less precipitation.
The long and short of it is that we were mostly concerned about surface wet snow instabilities atop carrying rain crusts treeline and below, and surface wind slab instabilities atop thinner carrying sun crusts at higher elevations. The exceptions were the highest elevation north aspects where there was still a concern with the Feb 26 surface hoar, which was very well preserved, buried 120-150 cm by the end of the week and giving sudden hard shears.
Avalanche activity near the end of the week seemed mostly limited to wet snow instabilities, mostly in open features below treeline. Visibility was often not great though so there may have been more activity than we were aware of. Glide cracks were also avalanching regularly to size 2.5 during the warm part of the day and into the evening as it cooled off.
Danger ratings hovered in the Moderate/Low/Low region, with higher danger during daytime warming events and during periods of wind and snowfall. |