Quick report
- Aspect
- East
- Elevation
- 2926 m
- Slope Angle
- 30°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>No red flags today!! Hard to imagine that we'd make it to this point. Solid snowpack. Just enough new snow for good riding on north facing slopes. Cool weather, some clouds, no evidence of any wind where we were. No wind loading. No recent avalanches (except very small dry snow sluffs), deep solid snowpack. </p>
Snowpack was 6 feet deep at 8200 feet and at 9600 feet. Photo below is the snow pit graphed above. Second photo is a ridgeline at 9800 feet between Snake Creek and Dry Fork. No evidence of any wind. Notice snow on all the trees as evidence of no wind; however, Alta and Snowbird reported some drifting of snow from east winds.
Digging a 6 foot deep snow pit took some time, but it was worth it. We both discussed that it changes your perspective of the snow when your standing with your eyes even with or below the snow. Everything feels a lot more scary, and it forced us to come up with definitive answers as to why we felt comfortable riding in avalanche terrain. We checked "no" to all the red flags and "no" to recent avalanches. It's hard to convey how the faceted layers near the ground felt, and the increase in strength of those layers isn't totally conveyed in the graph above. However, after digging pits all winter and feeling the PWL with our hands and our shovels, it is way stronger and we had no concerns about avalanches breaking deep in the snowpack.
There was some sluffing of the new snow. It was totally harmless and was no problem as we rode steep terrain. The new snow sluffed easier where it was resting on top of an ice crust.
It felt funny being in avalanche terrain today with no avalanche concerns. Wow. What a change in conditions from a month ago. In fact I didn't think that I'd ever ski in serious avalanche terrain this winter, but conditions change.