Quick report
- Aspect
- Northeast
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2682 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>After multiple days of heavy mostly-westerly winds, most east faces are heavily wind-loaded with corniced ridges. Particularly above ~8000', the exposure to up-canyon winds from Red Butte and City Creek drainages has created a firm and inconsistently-sensitive situation surface on the east faces with some pockets sliding due to overloading or cornice drops. (See small picture) Just south of Lookout Peak's summit (8650'), the east side of the subridge had this natural hard wind-slab slide 120 ft. wide and 100-200 ft. long. Crown and flanks were ~24-36" deep and showed layers of wind-effect. Bed surface was the pre-1/10 facets that are now buried by two storms cycles.</p> <p>Though the temperature profile doesn't indicate a likelihood of strong faceting, I think the layers of previous facets still pose a threat. The layer of used-to-be-facets that were covered by the 1/10-1/12 storm snow is my greatest concern, having a thicker section of weaker snow with an increasingly significant load on top. Though ECTs on this deep pack provided no results, 2 SSTs fractured along this layer ~75cm down. I feel like different combinations of aspect, elevation, slope angle, and trigger-nature will provide results in this layer in the coming weeks.</p>
Snowpack heavily wind-affected after multi-day event, leaving most NNW-SSW slopes scoured or wind-boarded and most NNE-SSE slopes loaded to some degree. Where not damaged by wind, surfaces above ~8000' were heavily rimed. Below the surface, the cold snow from earlier in the week followed by the warm front and density change from 1/29 to 1/30 has left a very upside-down and punchy skiing surface.