From scanning the region to stepping off the skin track. A decision framework for BC backcountry.
Say you live in Squamish. On any given weekend, you're not choosing between one region; you're choosing between half a dozen. North Shore, Sky Pilot, Garibaldi Park, Whistler, Callaghan, the Duffey. Each of them might be having a completely different day. The North Shore took the brunt of Wednesday's rain. Callaghan stayed cold. The Duffey is windy but the snow's been dry for two weeks.
Without a clear picture of all of them at once, you're either guessing or spending your Friday night buried in four browser tabs, three PDFs, and a weather model you barely know how to read. That's the real barrier to backcountry skiing in BC. Not the terrain, not the fitness. The information overload.
Here's how to cut through it, step by step.
Open Snow Doctor and you'll see a map of every region in BC and the Rockies, each colour-coded by its current avalanche danger rating: green for Low, yellow for Moderate, orange for Considerable, red for High, black for Extreme. That's your safety filter.
Once you've ruled out the obvious no-go regions on danger alone, the freezing level and precipitation numbers become your quality filter: where is the best snow?
Say Callaghan and Whistler both got hammered this week. Same storm, similar danger ratings. But Callaghan's freezing level during the storm sat at 1,400m while Whistler's sat at 800m. That means Callaghan's big dump came in warmer: heavier, wetter, denser snow. Whistler caught the same storm but stayed colder, so that precip fell as lighter, drier powder higher into the alpine. You're going to Whistler.
That's the kind of call that used to require either local knowledge or half an hour digging through weather archives. With freezing level and precip side by side across every region on the map, it takes about ten seconds.
You can also toggle the time window (last 48 hours, next 48 hours, or both) to see where the storm came from versus where it's heading. That toggle updates the freezing level and precipitation for each region, so you can see not just what fell, but what's coming and whether it's going to warm up or cool down before you leave the house.
Danger Rating Reference
Most BC skiers operate at Moderate and Considerable. The difference between a Considerable day confined to a specific aspect and elevation band versus a Considerable day with widespread problems is the skill that keeps you safe. That nuance is what you'll dig into in the next step.
Once you've landed on a region, click into it. The first thing you see is the Overview tab, a dashboard designed to give you the full picture at a glance before you dive into the details.
The weather card shows you today's snapshot: snowfall in the last 48 hours, snowfall in the next 48 hours, the 7-day snow total, and any rain. Chips flag the things worth paying attention to at a glance: "warm temps", "very windy", or "rain at elevation". You don't need to read the full forecast to know whether the weather is a feature or a red flag.
The field observations card gives you the community's read on the region: a condition vibe based on how people who were actually out there described the snow (amazing, good, average, poor, terrible), plus counts of reported avalanches, incidents, and snowpack measurements. It's a fast gut-check: is the mountain behaving, or are people finding things they didn't expect?
Think of the Overview as your launchpad. It tells you whether to keep going deeper or reconsider the region entirely, all before you've spent 20 minutes in the tabs.
This is where Snow Doctor earns its name. Doctor's Orders is an AI-generated synthesis of the avalanche forecast, the GDPS weather model, and recent field observations. Written in plain language, the way a guide would brief you before a day out.
It starts with a confidence score (a transparent signal of how much data is available and how representative it is). If the field observations are thin, or the weather model is missing, the Doctor tells you. It doesn't pretend to know more than it does.
Then it gets into the meat: where the goods are (specific aspects, elevation bands, terrain features given current snow quality and safety), what to avoid and why, and how the snowpack is likely structured right now, with a layer-by-layer read connecting each interface to the weather event that created it.
It closes with Tips for the Day Out: what to watch for (shooting cracks, pinwheeling, hollow drums), what to test on the skin track (hand shears, compression tests, snow feel off the track), and how to move as a group. It also closes with five questions to ask on the skin track, which is one of our favourite touches. Not preachy, not technical. Just the kind of things a switched-on guide would get the group thinking about.
A note on AI and mountains: Doctor's Orders is a tool to help you think, not to think for you. It can't see the snowpack. It doesn't know your group's skills or your specific objective. Use it to sharpen your decision, not to make it.
Doctor's Orders is the synthesis. The tabs behind it are the source material. If something in the summary surprises you, or you just want to go deeper, here's what each tab gives you.
This is Avalanche Canada's regional forecast, surfaced directly in Snow Doctor with no extra clicks. You get the danger rating by elevation band (alpine, treeline, below treeline), the active avalanche problems with their aspect and elevation rose, and the forecast text. All in the same flow as your weather and obs data.
Most experienced BC skiers already know this information from the Avalanche Canada app or website. The difference here is context: you're reading the forecast alongside the weather that produced it and the field reports that confirm or complicate it, not in isolation.
The weather tab is where Snow Doctor pulls away from anything else out there. It uses the GDPS model (the same Environment Canada model that forecasters use) and breaks it down by elevation: upper mountain, mid mountain, lower mountain. You can view the last 7 days, the next 7 days, or both, with data grouped into meaningful time bands rather than hour-by-hour noise.
Temperature, freezing level, precipitation (rain vs. snow, amounts), wind speed and direction, visibility: all by elevation, all in one screen. A lot of backcountry skiers find themselves running multiple weather models trying to triangulate the truth, only to discover they were all saying roughly the same thing. That's nerding out to your own detriment. One good model, interpreted well, is more useful than five that you can only skim.
Snow Doctor gives you what you need to understand what came, what's coming, and what that means for the snowpack. No rabbit hole.
The field observations tab surfaces MIN reports from Avalanche Canada's Mountain Information Network, filtered and displayed for your specific region. You can toggle between a map view (to see exactly where people were and how close that is to your objective) and a list view with timestamps, so you can tell whether you're looking at yesterday's data or something from three weeks ago before a major storm.
What to look for: natural avalanche activity (size, aspect, elevation), instability signs (whumpfing, shooting cracks), snowpack tests and results, and how people described the snow. Image captions often carry the best detail; guides and patrollers are precise about things like "wind-pressed and faceted in the alpine, protected powder in the exits."
An observation that confirms the forecast builds confidence. One that contradicts it is worth sitting with before you commit.
Doctor's Orders gives you the general picture. Ask the Doctor is where you connect that picture to your specific reality.
You can ask things like: "When would be the ideal time to harvest corn on the south-facing aspects?" or "We're doing a hut trip this weekend. What should we be thinking about for Saturday versus Sunday?" or "Is the alpine worth it today or should we stay in the trees?" The Doctor draws on the same data (the forecast, the weather, the obs) and responds to your specific question rather than giving you the full brief again.
It's the difference between reading a briefing and having a conversation with someone who read it.
Hit the copy button in the top nav and Snow Doctor generates a shareable version of the report for your region. Send it to your crew in the group chat the night before. Everyone shows up having read the same conditions summary, so you're not spending the first 20 minutes of the skin track getting people up to speed.
Shared context makes for better group decisions in the field.
Hit play and Snow Doctor reads Doctor's Orders aloud. Useful on the drive up when your eyes are on the road, or on the skin track when your phone is in your pocket and your hands are in your poles.
The best-prepared backcountry skiers are the ones who thought through the conditions before they were in them. Arriving at the trailhead with the mental model already loaded is worth more than any amount of on-the-fly improvisation.
Wherever you're based in BC (Squamish, Revelstoke, Golden, Nelson), there are regions nearby with conditions worth knowing. The map, the overview, Doctor's Orders, and everything behind it are all waiting.
Open Snow Doctor