Utah Avalanche Center

Rapid warming through the morning

Rapid warming throughout the morning

triggered a large woompf

Triggered by second skier who was caught but not buried or injured. Snowpack on this west side of the ridge was remarkably weaker and faceted below 90 cm compared to the east side. Not really an issue b/c the surface hoar layer is the weakest layer and the main problem. We had only one very small collapse the entire time we were out. I thought there would be more.

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.