Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading
- Elevation
- 2377 m
- Slope Angle
- 28°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Natural D1-2 avalanches yesterday (17 January) all along the headwall between Ben Lomond and Willard Peak. Also wet activity on the steep southerlies of Island Peak above Cutler Creek. See avalanche obs for full descriptions and photos. </p>
Had a conversation with my friend Ben last night who reported an avalanche just above his house due to cross loading from wind in a small gully.
See: https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche/50485
In 10 years he's never seen one there. It was a good reminder that intuition and experience are only aids to judgment when the context is consistent. When novel or unusual situations present themselves, it's important to recognize them and leave wide margin. It was quite warm and sunny in the valley yesterday afternoon but cool and clear enough overnight that there was frost on the windshield.
With this all in mind, I headed up this morning expected evidence of wet snow from yesterday afternoon, a bit of surface hoar somewhere, and wind effects all over the place. This all verified to one degree or another (details above), but I generally found great riding conditions in dense powder. Cornicing on Chilly Peak ridgeline was surprisingly little (pictured below). Winds were sufficient, however, to begin cornice development on the Hogsback Ridge on the way to the Ben Lomond saddle.
Dug a pit in what is normally sheltered terrain (a bit of surface wind effect was evident as light scalloping on the snow surface) near the weather station on a N facing 28 degree slope at 7800ft. Snow depth was 225cm, with ECTN28 cracking on a graupel layer 60cm down from the snow surface. No other results of note. Snow structure in the top 1.5m looks pretty good, generally right side up with only minor hardness inversions of about a half a step between 4F and 1F layers.
Snowpack
Ski pen was consistently ankle to boot top with 6-10" of new snow; boot pen was upwards of a meter. Despite wind effects in the middle elevations, surface snow was still very enjoyable dense powder, though occasiaonlly one found the wind packed snow layer beneath in the most exposed locations. In the low elevations I found the sparkle of small and inconsistent surface hoar.