[MCR] Silvertip Lake area- Kokanee Park- Selkirk Mountains

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Hi All,

We just finished a tent based ski touring camp in the Southeast corner of Kokanee Provincial Park. The Silvertip lake area is located between the headwaters of Kokanee and Coffee creeks. Over this 4-day trip, we enjoyed mainly clear skies with cold alpine temperatures and benefited from good ski quality and a stable snowpack. 

We skied between 2500m and 1600m on all aspects and in terrain up to 45 degrees. The best skiing was found on East and West aspects. Most Northerly terrain was slightly wind affected by recent winds from the north, we notice some isolated wind slabs up to 20cm thick in some alpine lee slopes 
and down-flow areas. A thin sun crust was found on steep solar aspects. 

At treeline the snowpack was generally well distributed and hovering around the 250cm mark (seems slightly below average). The alpine snowpack in this area has seen lots of wind this winter. There was significant variability in the snow distribution on exposed slopes and southerly alpine terrain. This may be just localized but the alpine snowpack looked more like a Purcell snowpack rather than a Selkirk one here; we were concerned by some potentially weak/faceted thin snowpack areas up high. The February 8th surface hoar layer with preserved 20mm crystals was found under 5 to 10cm of low density snow. This layer sits on a 2 to 5cm crust, with facets below, on all the solar aspects we skied.  It was generally nonreactive to skier traffic except in steep wind affected alpine areas where some minor cracking and sluffing was observed. 

As we headed out today, a new layer of surface hoar with crystals averaging 6mm at treeline was getting buried by light snow accumulation. These layers, specially the February 8th layer, will require monitoring as we get more snow load over the next while. It will likely be an avalanche concern for the rest of the winter season.

Cheers,

David Lussier
ACMG-IFMGA Mountain Guide
www.summitmountainguides.com



 		 	   		  
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