Observation: Salt Lake

Travel today was up Porter Fork to Gobblers Knob. We skied the mainline, bobslide and the nose, pretty much the same snow conditions top to bottom, settled non wind affected, boot deep powder. The main reason for this observation it's the thin and poorly structured snow pack in the starting zone of the Bobslide. Most of the spots we probed had a deep right side up snowpack but probing in the starting zone of the Bobslide revealed 3ft of snow with large grain loose facet at the ground interface. Ran into Peter Donner who spends a lot of time in the area, and he said that that slope hade run during the thanksgivings cycle which makes the thin and fragile snow pack make sense. I would be suspect of that line if gets a large load, it was basically the new snow sitting on a denser layer, resting on a somewhat stout wind slab with weak faceted snow below that extending to the ground. Haven't seen weak snow like that in a while except in No Name which also avalanched during the thanksgiving cycle. Good to run into Bruce Tremper, Susie and Paul Diegel as well.

photos: rimed dead trees on the ridge and the cloud deck dropping below 10100ft

Tomorrow might get interesting on the sun exposed slopes, they haven't seen full sun and above average temperatures in a while.

The snow on the N end of the compass was settled powder with boot deep penetration, the S facing had some slabbyness off the ridge line due to wind loading from the NW winds, on our second run the S had become damp as well as the lower elevationW facing.