Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We saw all of these red flags during our travel today. The wind was drifting snow along the upper ridges onto NE and E facing slopes. We experienced localized collapsing, not any of the huge one's that startle you although we were traveling on very conservative terrain. The base of the snowpack consists of pure sugar on many of the upper elevation slopes warrenting the Poor Snowpack Structure red flag.</p>
The video below shows what my partner and I were finding up in the hills on Sunday.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The biggest concern is triggering and getting caught in an avalanche that breaks into weak faceted sugar snow near the ground. There is no way that you can justify getting onto steep terrain right now that has this weak snow present. It will get trickier as time goes on because we won't see any obvious signs of avalanches until perhaps the 4th person on the slope triggers something. <strong> I cannot stress enough that this situation calls for caution for some time to come.</strong></p>
I measured 9" at the top of Fairview Canyon. The central Skyline from about Pleasant Creek through Ephraim Canyons did the best with a foot or slightly more. The new snow was VERY low density.