Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Volume of recent snow is impressive.</p>
Tour was mostly in the dark with early morning skiing on North and South facing aspects. Both skied well and due to the depth of the new snow, the steeper the better. Watched Solitude patrol hiking Fantasy Ridge and blasting, new snow results only from what I could see. No signs of natural activity during the tour, however back at the car I looked up on the southwest facing pockets above the summer road at Alta and saw several long running loose dry avalanches of little consequence. Cornices up top are getting huge!
Photo 1: Wolverine Cirque looking mighty filled in under the pale blue light.
Photo 2: Patsey Trees still snow covered = not much wind.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Needed sustained pitch, but you could get chunks of cornice and slope cuts to entrain snow. Perhaps more problematic is snow immersion in tree wells and cavities. Keep the kids close.</p>
Utah at its finest. Deep and light. 2-3m depth average in upper Grizzly and features are dissappearing. Stellar dendrites everywhere and it made skinning on existing skin tracks very slippery on the stepper sections. Trailbreaking was difficult due to shear depth. On top of Patsey on the westerly ridge, there was a very hard substrate (from stronger winds prior to latest storm) underneath the new low density snow.