Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Rapid Warming
While many of these avalanches can be found on the Observations page, I think it paints a picture how many skier-triggered slides one could see in a relatively short tour distance yesterday.
Photos:
#1: The Sunset Peak avalanches. See Nikki's observation here.
#2: Near Lower Wolverine Chutes
#3: Pioneer Peak.
#4: Near Dog Lake.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Traveling throughout the backcountry near Alta for most of the day before exiting to Brighton, I saw more small to large (D1-D2) avalanches than I could count (head to the Observations page <a href="https://utahavalanchecenter.org/observations">HERE</a> to see reports on many of these). These all were soft slab avalanches of wind-drifted snow that primarily broke on the density change in the snow between the 4/1 and 4/2 storms. They predominantly were on the leeward sides of ridges, however some slides, like the one on <a href="https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche/103717">Sunset Peak</a>, released sympathetically mid-slope, out the wind zone and propagated widely. </p> <p>Poking into the crown of 4 different skier-triggered wind slab avalanches, they all appeared to run on the interface between the 4/1 and 4/2 storms. In most areas in upper elevations (and in all crowns I looked into), this was a layer that had warmed up during the greenhousing on 4/1, then refrozen, before being buring by the snow/graupel mix on 4/2. The 4/2 storm snow was primarily a soft slab, and ran on DF and stellars on top of this crust where it existed. Despite cold temps, however, the 4/2 snow was starting to slab up in the afternoon due to solar input. </p> <p>There was no notable wet activity I observed. <em>However, </em>as I watched wind slab avalanches peel off the mid-storm-4/1-4/2-interface, and observed the 4/2 storm snow continually slabbing up during the day with solar input despite cold temps, it is hard to not imagine wet snow avalanches becoming a real problem tomorrow as temps shoot up for the first time since the storm. </p>