Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>I kept the day pretty mellow staying in slightly lower elevation terrain and still experienced a couple noteworthy collapses. The area had received about two feet of new snow with strong winds the last several days and the snow pack structure in this area is a red flag. Well developed weak faceted snow near the bottom of the snow pack with a thick slab of snow on top. I did not observe any recent avalanche activity in this area.</p>
This area around the East Fork of the Bear River normally is quite thin and rough, but the series of storms have really filled in a lot of the terrain and should have good snow coverage this season. I was able to find great low angle riding and turning today.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Thought it would be good to visit a location where the snow pack tends to be a little shallow and see how this area did with the storm. There is about 50" of total snow which is great for this place, however the snow pack structure right now is a red flag with early season weak faceted snow near the bottom and a thick slab of snow on top of it. I was able to get a column of snow to fracture with just 15 taps form the elbow, failing at the weak sugary snow interface.</p>
Nothing but great cold powder snow today in my travels. I did not visit much high elevation wind exposed terrain, but where I traveled there was some minor wind pillows, but no cracking.