Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>There was extensive avalanche activity today at all the resorts from explosive avalanche mitigation with many large, deep avalanches. There were reports of several natural avalanches as well from the backcountry and some remote triggers. The very large water equivalent of snow over the past several days has really added up the weight and we it seems that our high and extreme danger ratings today have been confirmed.</p> <p>Today we saw one slab probably from yesterday on the steep, east facing slopes of the Peak 10,420 ridge line. My snowmobiling friends reported seeing a large avalanche from the East Face of Ant Knoll, which took out the entire bowl and ran a very long distance. This probably occurred yesterday.</p>
Here is a quick video of my friend Andrew (Hobbie) Hobman, the Director of the New Zealand Avalanche Center. He's staying with me for a few days and it's nice change of pace to see a video of an international expert explaining our snowpack instead of our usual crew.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The main problem is that our multi-day storm has added 2-4 or more inches of water equivalent weight over the past several days. It is overloading many of the weak layers buried deep in the snowpack such as the faceted layers and surface hoar now buried 3 or more feet deep by the new snow. With extensive avalanche activity over the past couple days, in both the backcountry and from explosive avalanche mitigation at the ski resorts, it seems our High and Extreme danger ratings have verified.</p> <p>With lots of rain at lower elevations, we've seen quite a few damp and wet sluffs in the steep, low elevation terrain.</p>
The upper part of Big Cottonwood Canyon seemed to get the brunt of most of this storm. We found 2.5 - 3 feet of new snow, which is also fairly dense so it packs a lot of weight. It rides very nicely with good body to the snow and supportable.