16 Mar 2012

It was dumping yesterday morning in the valley. It was also blowing hard in the Alpine!!

Here are some maximum winds recorded yesterday:

2280 m at 12:45 140 KPH 170 Deg SbE
1860 m at 12:45 88 KPH 179 Deg S
2000 m at 06:45 133 KPH 111 Deg ESE
1835 m at 11:15 105 KPH 165 Deg SbE
At 2280 meters the temperature was - 10 as of 06:00 hrs. The winds were 0-5 KPH from the South. At 1550 meters the temperature was -6, 97 % relative humidity, and the barometer is on a slight decline. 6 cm was recorded at Catskinner weather plot and there was 6 cm recorded at the pig alley weather plot. There was 20 % settlement in the new snow that fell in 24 hours.

For the latest Avalanche Advisory click here: Avalanche Advisory

One lucky snowmobiler out runs avalanche, click here: Lucky

Test firing a gasex system: Testing

Up date on Ghost Mountain Avalanche: Ghost Mountain

A few photos and some field observations from Rohr Ridge. Thanks to Jay Audenart for the information.


We were up there on March 8th in the afternoon, skinning up the ridge there is a point where you can first look into a NW facing chute and into "Stellar Bowl". Seeing a large amount of debris I originally thought the stellar bowl had ripped out as I have seen before (2009?). But upon getting in to ridge top found the stellar bowl line was intact (lots of wind loading and big terrain-trap wind lips - did not ski),  skirted around it to the small lake mid way in the bowl. Skied to the slide where crown was from 50 to 180 cm. Bullet hard bed surface underneath. Mid Feb layer? I suspect (and I think you can tell from the photos) it was a cornice failure that caused the slide. It was warm the previous days and have since read on the CAA  south coast bulletin of reported cornice failures from that period. I think the slide emphasized to me a pretty good "tipping point" example!

Martin Offerson Photos


Field observations vs Snow pack test: Which is best when? by Bruce Jamieson Takes a while to load and is about 5 minutes long. Worth the time. Click here: Field Observations vs Snow pack test
Thanks to Ryan Bougie for the link.




Garibaldi Park Management Plan Amendment



Just another reminder to fill in the Garabaldi Park survey, click here to go to page: Your input is important