Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The only avalanche problems seem to be wind drifted snow from the strong west winds. This was occurring mostly near the ridge and subridges.</p> <p>The pre-existing snowpack is quite variable from place to place. In the deeper snow pack areas especially where there's been any kind of wind loading the snowpack is deep, dense and very stable. In the thinner snowpack areas the lower half is strong, rounded depth hoar. But everything is quite stable with no propagations and quality 3 shears on compression tests. </p>
Wind loading along the Ben Lomond ridge with it eroding on the west side (right) and depositing on the east side (left). I took this photo around 3 pm just before it started snowing.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The main problem seems to be wind slab development mostly along the ridges and sub ridges or any exposed to rain. The wind slabs are quite dense and strong sometimes cracking under your feet but I could not get any of them to move their not particularly sensitive</p>
Real mixed bag of snow conditions all different kinds of wind slabs and sun crusts and occasionally a few patches of soft dense powder. There's a very stout rain or melt crust beneath the surface snow at most elevations. This is from the Solstice storm and they have just not had the same amount of snow since then that the Salt Lake area mountain got. So the ice crust is much closer to the surface. Then, the strong east winds blew the more wind exposed areas back down the rain crust in many areas.
The straight north facing, wind protected slopes remain good with soft, dense powder but everything else is quite challenging. The trail in and out at lower elevations has good coverage and seems to be well traveled.