Persistent Slabs
- Alpine
- Treeline
- Below treeline
- Likelihood
- Possible
- Size
- 3
Yesterday, after getting the Windy Peak weather station up and running, I poked around in upper elevation terrain with the Park City Powder Cat crew. The common theme is... terrain facing the north half of the compass is starting to gain strength and slowly adjusting to last weeks big storm.
Now here's where it gets tricky. As the pack gets stronger it lures us into steep terrain, often without incident, giving us a false sense of snowpack stability. However, all we need to do is find one weakness, maybe around a bush or rock that we can't see buried underneath the snow, collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a scary avalanche. The way I'm avoiding this scenario is by simply avoiding the terrain where this setup exists.... mid and upper elevation, north facing slopes that harbored snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. So there's no reason to pull on the avalanche dragons tail. Lose the old snow and you lose the problem.... done and done.
But wait.... here's the good news. There's a lot of terrain to ride today and not have to deal with unmanageable avalanche conditions, IF you chose slopes that had NO old snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. So here's your exit strategy, simply swing around to the south half of the compass, ride in the sun and you can have a blast!
In the distance, the type of terrain where you could trigger an avalanche that breaks to old, weak snow near the ground.
Above, images of the bed surface and Ted's pit profile. This slide broke close to the ground near a crust and weak snow that formed in October.
Here's what we found yesterday. A good looking pit profile in terrain which had just a little old snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm.
