Kananaskis Country - February 19, 2012

The two week snow drought in Western Canada came to a close this past week with a few cm of snow falling across most of the resorts, with Castle mountain reporting 20cm this morning! Most of the popular backcountry areas have lots of tracks (relatively speaking), but the skiing conditions are still great if you stay off of the south facing aspects which have a sun-crust from the past two weeks. The formation of weak layers that formed during the the recent period with no snow (sun crust, surface hoar, etc.) create an instability as it becomes buried by future storms.  We didn't observe signs of instability today with the exception of loose snow and sluffing on steeper aspects, but certainly worth reading a post on the Canadian Avalanche Center's forecaster's blog: "The Tipping Point, February 19, 2012"

The snow was a welcome surprise, and we headed out into Kananaskis country near Black Prince today to check out the conditions. 

We had some great turns today.

Before heading out in the backcountry be sure to have the appropriate safety gear, know how to use it, and check out the weather forecast and avalanche conditions at avalanche.ca.

You can check out more photos (or the larger versions) from today in our photo gallery.

Cheers!