I Guess We're All Doing Dry January This Year

Cameron Fenton

— 2 min read
I Guess We're All Doing Dry January This Year
We're in the middle of one of the driest starts to a year in BC history.

This past week has been blue skies and cool temperatures. It makes for beautiful days in the mountains but less than ideal skiing conditions. Everywhere except protected northerly aspects has seen significant solar effect. Add with a widespread inversion crust across most of the mountains, finding good snow is challenging. Melt-freeze crusts are most prominent at lower elevations, making for some very challenging skinning and skiing conditions at and below treeline.

This weather has been great for exploration as it's brought a very stable snowpack and some nice weather and for pushing further and going longer. Last weekend skiers found 5-15cm of nice snow on top of a supportive crust from late last week in the Coquihalla, Manning and Chilliwack River zones.


What we're thinking about

The big question right now is simple – when we are going to see some more snow?

The long term forecast has some moderate precipitation heading our way by mid to late next week. Fingers crossed it's right, or underestimating things, but that's far enough out that we'll be watching the weather models closely to see if it changes. This prolonged period of cold, dry weather has also set up the potential for that new snow to fall on a crust/surface interface, which is a bit like a line of dominos on top of a skating rink. If we do get new snow, be ready for the avalanche hazard to spike.

While we are definitely thinking a lot about bikes and trail runs while we wait for a reset, there is still some fun to be had on skis. When conditions get like this, we look for high elevation, protected north aspects that might still be holding soft snow. Make sure to carefully evaluate these slopes for windslabs though because if there is still snow there, there might avalanche problems.

These conditions are also good for days that are more about touring than turns. Routes like the Zupjok-Alpaca Ridgeline, the Flatiron-Portia zone and the Skyline Divide tour are packed with views and exploration. But, keep in mind that they all require below treeline travel that can be challenging and dangerous in these conditions. Ski crampons might be helpful.

While we're all praying for snow, remember that tonight is our Winter Mountain Town series where we'll be showing Papsura and diving more into the "State of the Snowpack" here in our local mountains. We'll share some historical and current data, as well as discuss the long term weather models and when we might see winter return. There are a few tickets left online and we'll have them at the door. We also have some great prized from Avalanche Canada, Patagonia and Mt.Waddington Outdoors.

Other Upcoming Events:

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