Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Heavy snowfall, wind loading, poor visibility, being solo and cracking in the drifted snow was enough to keep me out of the bigger N facing lines such as the Monitors.</p>
Seemed like a real winter day today, travel was up Willow Heights across West Monitor a run or two on the sub-ridge then across South Monitor to USA Bowl and out. The new snow seemed fairly well behaved, there was some long running sluffs in West Monitor produced from cornice fall but no real slab activity noted, keep in mind the visibility was extremely poor. The cornices in both S and W Monitor were extremely sensitive and would crack out on approach but didn't seem to produce any avalanche activity either. Like I stated before the wind loading was keeping me suspect of the steeper lines which I avoided. The new light density snow was not adding a whole lot of weight but when you combine new snow with rapid wind loading creating stiffer drifts the weight starts to add up quickly.
Photos: sensitive cornices breaking upon approach but producing no avalanche activity, cracking in the wind drifts on the ridge line, and trail breaking through deep snow which is a oddity this year
Moderate sounds about right for today but if the wind continues to blow and we get more snow tonight the hazard might increase
Snowpack
The PC ridge line received at least a foot of new snow, maybe more, hard to tell with the wind transport. The snow was light density and right side up cold smoke. Started with about 8 inches at the Solitude parking lot increasing depth with elevation gain.