Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Cracking, Collapsing, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Although there were lots of red flags, the slab was quite soft and manageable in most of the terrain. The snow would move a sluffs and only very occasionally crack as a slab, running on the new/old snow interface on the pre-existing faceted snow on the surface.</p>
Here is a 3-minute video of me explaing the snowpack structure and avalanche danger in various places in White Pine Canyon of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>It's kind of a grey area between persistent slab and storm snow. Much of the avalanche activity occurred as naturals during the storm as sluffs and occasional soft slabs but since they were running on the old, snow surface, which was faceted snow, I should probably call them persistent slabs. The new snow is quite soft and manageable so it produced mostly class 1 or occasionally class 2 slides and it tended to break at your feet instead of above you. We got several collapses during the day on the faceted snow but no avalanches. We watched our slope steepness, as usual, but I think the steeper lines probably would have been well behaved as well.</p> <p>Although we did not see any wet avalanches today, nor greenhousing, there were reports of some in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon and Cardiff Fork, among other places. Once we get strong sun on this low density snow, it will want to suff very easily.</p>
Very good snow conditions with a foot of light powder on a mostly supportable base. You could sometimes feel the old tracks and crusts and sometimes punch into bottomless depth hoar in the shallower areas. Snow remained quite good on all aspects and elevations with no apparent wind damage.