This Holiday season, Cariboo residents who plan to venture out to the backcountry, that is if they can handle the extremely cold conditions, should also take into account Avalanche conditions in the region.
“We have had a lot of recent snow, and we’ve had that snow at all elevations, and in many places, people would have noticed that the wind has been fairly strong too.” Avalanche Forecasting Supervisor James Floyer said, “With those things together and the new snow combined with the wind certainly does give us a recipe for avalanche hazard. As we move towards the weekend I think we can cautiously say that we’ll see a gradual improvement in avalanche conditions, especially as it becomes cold, but it’s going to be gradual. It’s not suddenly going to go from fairly serious avalanche conditions to nothing at all.”
Floyer noted its going to be prudent to select small terrain features, it’s not the time to go really hard to the big Alpine bowls, those are the places that avalanche conditions will remain problematic. But smaller features, smaller slopes, especially testing small, manageable slopes where the consequence isn’t very high, if you’re a skier you can probably find some great skiing in the trees. If you’re on snowmobiles work those kind of meadows, get confidence on smaller steeper slopes that remain small that are big enough to produce a large avalanche. Those are the kind of terrain that I think you can really have with over the holiday season.
For the latest Avalanche Rating, you can visit the Avalanche Canada website.