Quick report
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
Travel was Days Fork from Spruces. It has been two weeks since I've been in Days Fork, and was expecting to find a better-looking snowpack. There is 90-150 cms HS upcanyon from Chicken Shit Ridge and beyond. In several places we dug on northwest through northeast, very weak faceted snow down near the ground, with a 4F/1F stronger slab on top. (John Mletshnig was also finding this poor structure in Days Fork on 2/9)
Although we were finding the poor structure, we could not get any ECTs to propagate (ECTX). However, John was getting ECTP21 on buried facets, and a party we encountered coming down Days from Alta reported ECTP15.
Video below is a description of what we were finding, and how the poor structure influenced our decisions today. (Summary - poor structure with consequences below had us change plans to other terrain.) Similar story to Drew and Zinnia's observation from Broads Fork the previous day. (Poor script writers - I think I mentioned "not crazy about the structure" and 5 times!)
Otherwise, the only item of interest was sluffing in the storm snow. This sluff ran approximately 300'.
Snowpack
An optimistic ~5 cms of storm snow. Some sensitive shallow pockets of fresh wind drifts along ridges. Low-density storm snow would sluff easily on steep slopes.
Good riding conditions on slopes with a northerly aspect.