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Observation: Moffit Basin

StaplesUintas
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Quick report

I wanted to see how far into the snowpack liquid water had percolated. I also wanted to look for recent avalanche activity and was surprised by a lack of more activity. Overall the Uintas have maybe just stayed a bit cooler than other areas even though there haven't been below freezing air temperature for 48 hours.

  • Low elevation south facing (7800) wet to the ground (only about 3 feet of snow)
  • Near treeline, mid elevation, southwest facing (9500), the snow was wet about 2 feet down
  • Just at treeline, upper elevation, north facing (10,000'), the snow was only wet in the top few inches

In terms of avalanche activity, I couldn't find much. I did find the cornice triggered slide reported on Tuesday (first photo below) and I don't think that was a wet avalanche.

Spotted one wet slab on a SSE facing slope at 9200 ft (second photo)

And several wet loose avalanches (third photo of one of them).

Snowpack

Wet snow. But much more supportable in many places than I thought it would be. Many south facing slopes, especially low elevation ones, had soft wet snow to the ground.