Utah Avalanche Center

All our snowpits looked similar and had similar depth. There was widespread natural activity on the layer at 95cm. Both at ridgetops under cornices and at lower non-wind loaded locations. The facets near the ground are likely worse in some places. In all our other snowpits they looked better and were stonger. Overall the snowpack looks pretty good. With tonights snow, it will most like produce more avalanches at the 95cm layer. With such a large load forecasted, there will likely be places where avalanches step down, but this will not be a widespread issue.

Incredibly solid snowpack on south aspect. Dense hard snow. Nothing would break in ECT's.

This pit was dug in the flank of an avalanche. Whats interesting is that the stauchwall (the bottom edge of the slab that released) was very far downslope almost near the deposition area of avalanche debris. There was a similar slide but smaller at a similar aspect and elevation on Peak 10420. That slope tilts a little bit more north. It was triggered by snowboarders mid slope. For this avalanche we don't know how it was triggered.

We consistently got ECTP's with scores of 13 to 15 on a thin layer of small facets that formed on top of the old snow surface. This layer was consistently 4-8 inches above the ground depending on the snow depth prior to 48 hours ago. Despite these scores we did not observe any cracking or collapsing which surprised me given the rapid heavy load of snow.