Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches
- Elevation
- 2865 m
Travel today was Beartrap Fork, Desolation Ridgeline / Desolation Lake, and Park City Ridgeline. Overall, instabilities within the storm snow are settling out and should continue to on Friday and into this weekend. The weakest snow I was finding was down 70 cms at the interface with the storm snow from this week and the old snow surface, but ECT scores were all ECTN (no propagation) with poor quality shears at the fracture.
Visibility was poor today, but a bit of clearing provided this glimpse of West Desolation Ridgeline.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The 60-120 cms of storm snow over the past 7 days has several storm snow interfaces within the storm slab, with moderate to hard shears at these interfaces. Today, the shears were poor quality (Q2 or Q3), indicating the interfaces continue to bond. </p> <p>The heavy dose or snow, water weight, and wind-loading have complicated the PWL issue where the thinner snowpack areas where PWL avalanches have been triggered over the past two weeks is now not as thin, and has a stronger slab on top. Dave Kelly said it perfectly in his <a href="https://utahavalanchecenter.org/observation/83636">observation from Days Fork</a>: the thicker slab on top now means the <em>avalanches will be bigger</em>.</p>
Light snowfall today totaled 5 cms. Brilliant riding conditions.