Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>5 Red Flags, with recent avalanches dominating. Several loud booming collapses.</p>
Cruised Park City ridgeline today - this zone has been *very* active this week with numerous human-triggered slides. Focused on the Monitors as it now has three human-triggered slides in the past few days. The snowpack along the Park City ridgeline is typically weak even in a "good" year. But take a "bad" year, add an inch of water, wind, and some folks on skis/snowboards and you have an avalanche factory.
Most avalanches in this zone were triggered on slopes with denser slabs of wind-blown snow. In areas where there wasn't a stronger slab on top, pit results were ECTN. But where there was a stronger slab (mostly due to recent wind-loading, full propagation in extended column tests, with scores in the 20's.
Snowpack
Snow surface is faceting with radiation recrystallization found on some solar aspects - a thin 5mm layer of facets atop a crust. (Only becomes an issue if buried underneath new snow or wind-blown snow.)
Also beginning to notice "sandboxing" in thinner snowpack areas as any stronger snow atop of the facets continues to weaken and skis are starting to crash through to the ground.