Quick report
- Aspect
- Northeast
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3170 m
- Slope Angle
- 39°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Nothing glaring today where I was, although I am still leery of our set-up here, with reports of repeaters running on new/future weak layers, and some fairly weak albeit strengthening snow in the basement. Nonetheless, people starting to push into bigger terrain now.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Dug a hole on a NE aspect, 39 degree slope around 10,400 feet. Depth was about 140cm, the bulk of which is our pre-Christmas slab, with the new snow sitting on a thin crust, and the whole snowpack resting on around 7-10cm of 1-3mm facets. Could not get a failure near the ground, but in areas with a shallower snowpack, I could still see the low-probability/high-consequence nightmare coming true. I think areas affected by the East wind from last week are particularly suspect here...</p> <p>As was forecasted today, this was my main concern as I walked around the Brighton perimeter today. Was especially concerned with any windblown snow from Thursday night that was plastered onto either the rime crust that formed Thursday afternoon/evening, or onto NSF of an old bed surface...seems like we need some more wind to turn this into a more widespread problem, but the reports that Mark highlighted this morning are definitely a preview of coming attractions if we get some prolonged wind.</p>
Some really awesome conditions...several refreshes in a row with the southerly storm track producing about as good a week of riding as I could've expected. I haven't lived in Utah long, but I'm taking several people at their word that these are some of the best conditions we've had in a while, from a pure turning/riding standpoint. Maybe around a foot of new snow for the week.