Updated Dec 12 2025
A lot has happened in the mountains around Whistler this December. Freezing levels have oscillated like a yoyo to bring conditions that change by the minute, it seems. The alpine has been getting plenty of great snow and even saw an opening on the mountain last week when Harmony finally cracked. In the time that ensued, 7th heaven also opened, giving people a bit easier access to the Blackcomb alpine. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that there has been a Ton of rain. As reported by Zenith Guides in their weekly snow report, up to 118mm of rain fell at the Sea to Sky gondola, with even more falling south of the border. Resorts in Washington had nearly their entire snowpack obliterated, unfortunately.
Snowpack Situation
Last week when Harmony cracked I managed to dig a few pits and discovered some weak layers near the surface that had some pretty big slab potential. This was sitting on buried surface facets that formed on top of a rain crust. Not exactly good, stable avalanche conditions and there were a number of size 2 slides in the Whistler area as a result. Here’s a video I made from two of the compression tests I did:
Other reports this week seemed to be positive for those who went high on Blackcomb.
FB user Calvin Lee reported “80 cm of coastal dry snow in the Chuting Gallery”:
Forecast For The Week
It’s looking to be pretty wet again. Temps seem to cool but not before another atmospheric river. Here’s the forecast coming to the Sea to Sky Gondola outside Squamish, BC:
While I’m not one to say don’t go out into the mountains, this might be one of those (hopefully rare) situations where you’re better off catching a movie or cleaning that closet you’ve been avoiding. Not only will the conditions be fairly crappy if the freezing levels are as high as the forecast predicts, but it’ll also be dangerous.
Avalanche Canada Mountain Weather Forecast
The Avalanche Canada Forecast has a pretty solid atmospheric river looking to land just a bit north on BC’s central coast on Saturday. Hopefully that means we miss the brunt of it but with the warm temps it’ll just be pretty wet and gross. Nevertheless i’m going to go up because you can somehow always make some fun, no matter the conditions, with the right attitude.
