Observation: Fairview Canyon

I toured this morning in the Blind Fork of Fairview Canyon, at elevations from 8,600 to 9,400 feet on primarily west-facing slopes. In this area total snow depths are between 1.5 and 2 feet. This part of the Skyline has received much less early season snow than the central Skyline and only has a couple inches of the weakest faceted snow at the base. However, the rest of the snowpack has weakened substantially and in many places is almost completely faceted.

I'm pretty certain I was the first person to travel in this area this season and I experienced many large collapses and cracking incidents. All you have to do is stick your pole into the snow right now to feel how weak it is becoming. I attached a photo below of one of the most dramatic collapses I felt, this one on my third lap up the skin track. It may be hard to see but there is a crack that formed within the snowpack on the wall of the skin track.

It's worth noting that there is a similarly shallow snowpack throughout Fairview and Huntington Canyons. There isn't really much of a slab in many of these areas (and not enough/barely enough snow to recreate) but if/when we ever do get a large amount of snowfall these zones will likely be very suspect. With little to no snow in the forecast the snowpack is likely to further weaken over the next 10 days.

About 2 inches of dense new snow from yesterday's storm fell in Fairview canyon. On west aspects this snow fell on settled powder and facets but as soon as there was a little bit of a southern aspect it fell on a sun crust.