Quick report
- Aspect
- West
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2743 m
- Slope Angle
- 30°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>new snow over facets is not a good combination, but sheltered aspen glades we spent the day were well behaved, snow not dense or settled enough to connect over distance, and aspens were close enough together to break up any continuity while keeping you on your turns with nice open spots in lower angle terrain. We were not about to tackle the Bluebell area, that steeper terrain that was loading is not to be trusted. Even in our sheltered snowpit ECT had some pop when facets failed</p>
a look at Bluebell area
Skied fast, not as punchy as last week, getting better
facets beginning to chain
snowpit and tests
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Hazard will only increase with continued winds and new snow, warming temps, etc</p> <p>bottom 2/3 of pack is still extremely weak and we sandboxed in several areas putting in our uptrack, and if you stepped off your skis anywhere, boots would penetrate to ground. poles pushed to ground everywhere, but lower facets are slowly gaining strength,</p> <p> more snow = more load = reactivating facet failure, but if the Wasatch Plateau does not get the 2"-3" of water that Central Wasatch is forecast to receive leaves the problem hanging, we did not see any natural activity mid elevation or off steeper terrain at Bluebell. </p>
overnight snow is still right side up, in sheltered areas no slab exists, just fist ++ to 3 finger and well behaved. We were able to push slope angles into the 30's for short pitches because new snow is just not connected and we remained in gladed west through northwest areas in the aspens. The only collapse we experienced was on uptrack and we stopped over steep cutbank above old timber road for our snowpit. Otherwise, we did have some cracking as we checked out the edges of more wind effected terrain, but were focused on some skiing and have to admit it has continued to improve, very fast, skied like over 2' of powder but the lower pack was facets but less punchy than last weekend