Utah Avalanche Center

Surface hoar stripe was very obvious. If there were no surface hoar, this would be a stable snowpack and the only problem would be upside down storm snow which is hardly a problem at this point.

Skier triggered slide. We did not experience any collapsing but the party who triggered this slide experienced some collapsing while skinning up through low elevation terrain. The avalanche broke on surface hoar at 79 cm.

Noticed cracking (from 1/230 indicating the entire south side of slope had collapsed but not avalanched

Upper layers of snowpack were upside down and very obvious on foot and on sleds. The small facets were found in another pit on similar aspect and elevation and produced ECTP25. There seems to be a slight crust under them and this layer is an obvious stripe in the snowpit wall. It looked like there were a few surface hoar crystals as well but these were very hard to find.

Did not dig to ground.

Fx profile from 1/11 large natural avalanche

Fewer layers seen in this pit compared to lower elevations in Silver Fork. Weakest snow is the new snow of large, fragile stellars. When we got above treeline in an area with just a little wind, the new snow sluffed very easy and ran far distances. More snow and more wind overnight will mean more dry loose avalanches and sensitive wind slabs.

Some Surface Hoar found at 160 cm but very hard to find. We dug another pit on a NW aspect at 7900 ft and found nearly identical stratigrahpy and test results. The only difference was that there were no ice crusts. Facets under the ice crust at 160 cm have no load. The weakest snow at the moment are the fragile stellar crystals in the new snow. Some stellars are 6mm in size. Some are rimed.

General profile: in some areas, either a thin mf crust or thin wind crust separates the surface facets from the few inches of low density snow.