Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Occasionally I get a collapse on the deeply buried faceted snow. But there's not a whole lot of weight on top of that layer except in wind deposited areas. With the new snow just teasing us along with a few inches here, a few there, it's not adding up fast enough to make the instability widespread, but it's just enough to keep me from jumping on anything over 30 degrees. The snowpack is so thin that there's a huge amount of spatial variability so it's tricky. The hidden obstacles under the snow are almost as hazardous as avalanches. Distubingly, I've noticed that people have avoided many dangerous slopes but they have also skied up others--places where I fear to tread, like the east face of 10,420. Yikes. Some of the steep, north facing features slid during a previous avalanche cycle and they are starting to look fat again. </p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>See above.</p>
It's amazing how just a little bit of new snow can improve conditions. Big Cottonwood Canyon in general seems to have half the amount of snow as LCC. I'm cabin sitting for a few days in upper BCC and every day I go out I find very similar snowpack. It's very shallow with a total depth of less than 2 feet deep most everywhere. Needless to say, there's lots of downfall and brush to negotiate but the old snow has a well-settled layer that's dense enough to keep the skis from snagging too many obstacles. Pretty crusty or no snow at all on southerly aspects. Just under 2 feet on aspects facing the north half of the compass. Lots of wind-blasted terrain up high along the ridges. This place could sure use a big dump of snow.