Quick report
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Difficult to identify any true red flags. There was some periods of heavy snowfall, and some wind, and warming. But this occurs when you get a wet storm in April, and conditions change so incredibly fast. You just need to pay attention to the rapidly changing conditions this time of year!</p>
Several early-morning runs in East Bowl of Silver Fork, with midday exit through Little Cottonwood. We were able to get some class 1 sluffs in steeper terrain, but as soon as the sluffs hit lower-angled terrain (< 35 degrees) they stopped moving. Was finding some dense storm slabs to crack and propagate on steeper aspects, but a few quick ECTs only got ECTN with no propagation. Sluffs were running within storm snow, denser storm slabs were failing at the new/old snow interface down 30 cms (12") just above a temperature crust.
Overall hazard where we were traveling was solid Moderate, with sluffs and storm slabs on steeper aspects. Going forward, concerns with upcoming warm-up are with two crusts buried in the top 45 cms of the snowpack. These are the crusts the two recent storm slabs fell on. They may provide bed surfaces and barriers for liquid water to create possible wet slabs in the next few days. More pronounced on solar aspects, but this time of year crusts are present on almost any aspect.
Snowpack
30 cms of storm snow with clean shears at interface of new/old snow. Storm snow > 9500' was dry in the early am, but very quickly became damp on all aspects by about 1100.