Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Plenty of red flags to keep me off the big terrain today. A siginifant load of 3" of moisture in the last few days in upper LCC, cracking and a poor snowpack structure in many locations. </p>
Evidence of avalanches in the Y, Little Pine, White Pine and Superior.
There have been 23 storms with over 6" of snow at Alta this year with an average density this season of 10.21% Lots of snow, surface and near surface surface instabilities and direct action avalanches have been more frequent than persistent weak layers this year. There have been a few rain events earlier this season at 8k, many locations now have a 3 meter deep snowpack...trending towards maritime??
Pic. 1. Large cornices
Pic 2. I did not even need to leave my neighborhood to see signs of avalanche activity.
Pic 3. Evidence of a D3 avalanche..."can damage a truck" or in this case the Hellgate Condo Van
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Although loosing energy there are still storm slabs out there that I am sure could be active into tomorrow. They possibly could step down into deeper avalanches. </p> <p>Persistent slabs breaking on faceted or buried surface hoar will be deep unmanageable avalanches. I would guess that most of these are going to be outside of upper LCC & BCC. For example the slide on Mt. Aire today and the UOP slide Andy reported, both outside the central cottonwoods. I would suspect lower elevations might also be a place where you could find trouble even in the cottonwoods.</p>
Well with the new snow on top of our existing storm snow its back to right side up which is making for amazing ridding conditions. Not much transport of the new low density snow today. Looks like winds will be relatively minimal the next 48 hours but something to keep a eye on if the forecast does not verify and they do pick up. No result from a few dropped cornices. Evidence of winds under the light density new snow from the South, West & North West above 9500. A few density changes in the storm snow. On steeper rollovers 50cm storm slabs were trying to break out. Ski penetration on the way up was around that same depth. Snowbird snowtel site up to 192% of median.