Quick report
- Aspect
- West
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2560 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
We went out to dig pits today and ended up not traveling very far. The combination of heavy snowfall and wet snow limited our time in the field. We didn't travel very far to where we ended up digging our pits and didn't get to observe anything in the upper elevation band. Lower elevations in Park City, Kimbal Junction, and Deer Valley still lack a signifigant amount of snow. The amount of snow accumulated seems to jump pretty drastically as soon as you enter the mid elevation band, and it definietly harbors old weak snow from our december drought.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>While we didn't observe Cracking or Collapsing on our outing today, we did not a very weak snowpack structure with a thick slab of Pencil hard rounds on top of Fist hard Facets. With the additonal load added with this most recent storm, I would expect to see continued faliures on this layer. Overtime, the additonal snowpack will insulate and help the facets start to heal, but we need to give it time. </p> <p>Today we observed about a foot of new snow accumulate while we were in the field. </p>
The snow came in pretty heavy and wet, soaking through our layers in the matter of an hour in the field.