Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
Toured up in Mineral Fork the last two days. Anything south to west facing was having small wet loose avalanches and the north through east aspects started cold and dry but became warm and damp throughout the day. Most slides were limited to D1 slides on sunny aspects. I dug a pit on a NE aspect and found mostly 4 finger hard snow on top of a 30cm facet base. While the snowpack structure is still concerning, the facets are buried so deep that they are likely to be unreactive in most areas. While there was some soft slab avalanches in extreme terrain features, I suspect these will become less likely in the next few days.
I've been watching this area of Mineral Fork for the season and the top bowls have been having repeater avalanches all season long. Some of the crown faces are still not fully filled in and it looked like these ran to the ground 2 weeks ago.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>There has been a lot of wet loose activity the last couple days in the Cottonwoods. There was a massive 3' diameter pinwheel and tons of other activity. There was some D1 wet slides that came out of Dark Ebony and a couple other chutes. There was also a number of wet slides that came down the usual areas in BCC like Mt Raymond and Gobbler's Knob. Even the east and north aspects began to warm and get wet as the day went on. As the snowpack further consolidates over the next couple days, we will see this issue decrease. </p>