Lucie Kubikova and Shane Roy had their eyes on a large coyote they'd spotted in a Pemberton, B.C. field on Monday afternoon, May 1, when they noticed movement in the distance.
A massive avalanche had released on Mount Currie. Kubikova pulled out her phone and captured video of the slide ripping down an established avalanche path.
Ts’zil, as the peak is known in the Lil'wat First Nation's traditional language, means "Slides on the Mountain," according to Johnny Jones. (He worked for more than 30 years as a cultural technician in Lil’wat Nation's Lands and Resources Department before retiring in 2021.)
Monday was the last day of a Special Public Avalanche Warning that went into effect for most of Western Canada—including the Sea to Sky—on Thursday, April 27.
Amid soaring temperatures, the corridor has seen significant natural avalanche activity reported in recent days. That includes size-3 slides observed in Whistler's Garibaldi Provincial Park, on the far side of Blackcomb Glacier, and an enormous, size-3 wet slab avalanche that slid down Blackcomb's Lower Disease Ridge on Tuesday afternoon, May 2. Both zones are outside Blackcomb Mountain's ski area boundary.
As Avalanche Canada senior forecaster Mike Conlan told Pique last week, those larger slab avalanches that release deep within the snowpack usually take place after the first few days of significant warming at high elevations, especially when "there's no overnight refreeze," he said.
In those conditions, "The snowpack doesn't have time to heal itself. It stays warm overnight and then the next day it just gets warmer and warmer and warmer ... and once that occurs, we certainly start expecting deeper weak layers to have the potential of waking up."
The good news? It appears backcountry users heeded Avalanche Canada's warning, with Whistler Search and Rescue describing the last week as a quiet one for volunteers.
Avalanche danger ratings in the Sea to Sky remained "high" for alpine terrain on Wednesday, "considerable" at the treeline and "moderate" for below-treeline elevations, according to Avalanche Canada.
