Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3231 m
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>A scattering of small avalanches, mostly at the upper elevations, on northwest, north and northeasterly facing slopes, most above 10,000'. Many little cross loaded pockets and drifts noticable. Timing of slides uncertain, photos below. Of as much interest, was the weak snow on westerly as well as northerly facing slopes - pockets of near surface facets and recrystalized grauple, facets beneath melt freeze-crusts. It's making me reevaluate the distrabution of the weak surface snow at the upper elevations. I wonder what the upper elevations of high peaks in the Provo area mountains hold.</p>
Slides below from Red Pine, White Pine, Red Pine. Medium to hard slabs. Small enough they are only a concern if you were in the wrong terrain, and could be pushed into trees, over rocks, or taken for a long ride.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Lots of small natural wind slabs in both Red Pine and White Pine - hard to determine when they released. The wind got well down into the open bowls and into mid elevations. They were still trying to trip me up all the way down to the flats in White Pine, at least to 9,000', if not lower.</p>
It turned into more of a mountaineering-like tour at times - ski crampons weren't enough. Went to booting, and an ax or whippet might have been nice for a short section. Very wide variability in snow surface conditions - 2 to 6" of new snow, cracky soft to hard wind slabs, hard melt freeze crusts that didn't soften, scoured areas, icy in upper Lake Chute, and some very nice soft snow on wind sheltered slopes.