[MCR] Selkirks

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Yesterday we finished a week at Selkirk Lodge just southwest of  
Rogers Pass.

There has been well over a meter of snow in the past 10 days or so.  
This overloaded deep weak layers in the snowpack and as I'm sure most  
people have heard there was a major avalanche cycle mid-week with  
avalanches to size 3 in our zone and to size 4 elsewhere.

Since then things have settled somewhat. We skied almost exclusively  
at treeline and at that elevation in that zone we found two surface  
hoar layers down 120-150 cm that were unreactive to our tests, to  
skiing and to natural loading events. There were some windslab  
avalanches at treeline over the week after wind events, mostly size 1  
with a few size 2s. We were able to ski some steeper terrain on  
moderate sized slopes with no overhead hazard from alpine terrain.

We made a few brief forays into alpine terrain but we kept to low  
angled slopes with little or no overhead hazard. This was where we  
saw evidence of large avalanches with most of them occurring on 35-45  
degree slopes. Nearly all of them started around rocks or at the base  
of cliffs. The deepest fracture lines were perhaps 150-200 cm thick  
and those large avalanches seemed to have mostly been triggered by  
another, smaller avalanche that started higher on the slope.

Large, naturally triggered avalanche activity has tapered off but at  
the end of the week we still were avoiding steep alpine terrain as we  
had very limited information on what layer the large avalanches were  
failing on and how sensitive the instability was. Of note was that  
with probing on the Justice Glacier at 2100 m we felt a 50 cm thick  
facetted crust at the base of the snowpack and this was of concern to  
us.

The skiing was really good, with the best quality being found in the  
forest. Alpine areas have had a lot of wind effect.

Mark Klassen
Mountain Guide
www.facebook.com/alpinism


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