Quick report
- Aspect
- West
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Elevation
- 2743 m
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Pockets of wind-drifted snow up to 45 cms (18").</p>
Overall snowpack looks solid in areas where I traveled today in Powder Mountain backcountry, and towards Sharps Peak. Some faceting at the snow surface in wind-sheltered areas, but this will likely deteriorate with warming weather forecasted. Storm Thursday through the weekend likely confined to weaknesses within storm snow, or at the interface with the existing snow surface; not expecting deeper instabilities.
There is a fairly deep snowpack at lower elevations, with some possible weak snow on northerly/shady aspects, and heavy wet snow/rain on Thursday may cause low elevation concerns.
Thanks to Mike Jenkins of Powder Mountain and Aaron Barnett of Whisper Ridge for spending time with me today and showing me around their zones!
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Winds were moving and drifting snow along ridges, cross-loading down off of ridgelines to 8400'. Most of the drifts were stubborn and unreactive, but a few propagated a short ways from my skis. Drifts were generally pockets and not widespread. Increasing danger as winds are forecasted to increase throughout the next 36 hours.</p> <p>The slide on Sharps Mountain on Friday Feb 8 intrigued us at the UAC (<a href="https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche/44199">observation</a>). This was on a northwest aspect at 8500'. I looked at similar aspects today, generally between 8500' and 9000' in Wolf Creek Canyon and overall found a very stable snowpack, with depths exceeding 2 meters. However, I did find one possible outlier with HS 135 cms where the bottom ~30-40 cms of the snowpack was weaker facets. Difficult to gauge how widespread this problem is, and if it's more of an issue as the range moves more towards Cache Valley.</p> <p>Came away with the feeling the problem of PWL's is isolated and will be found on west/northwest aspects that have been wind-scoured to prevent a deeper snowpack from developing and allowing facets to develop.</p>
HS consistently 2 - 2.5 meters, with a few outliers closer to a meter.