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Observation: East Bowl 3/11/2010

Observer Name:

Greg Gagne

Observation Date:

03/11/2010

Region:

Salt Lake
Big Cottonwood Canyon
Silver Fork
East Bowl

Location or Route:

East Bowl Silver Fork

Weather

Sky:

Few

Weather Comments:

Clouds built up by late morning. 18 F. in the shade at 9500' at 11 am.

Snow Characteristics

New Snow Depth:

Snow Surface Conditions:

Powder

Snow Characteristic Comments:

About 3" new overnight - *very* light density that made for awkward skinning on old tracks.

Red Flags

Red Flag Comments:

No red flags apart from several sluffs.

Primary Concern

Primary Concern:

Wet Avalanches

Probability:

Moderate

Aspect:

Southeast

South

Southwest

Elevation:

High

Mid

Low

Trend:

Same

Primary Concern Comments:

Temps were cool enough today plus the clouds obscured the sun for quite a bit, so I don't think wet slides were a concern for Thursday. But with new light-density snow and expected warms temps, am thinking wet slides will become a concern for Friday.

snow_profile_location:

Comments - Photos - Videos (group 1)

The only thing noteworthy today was that it was easy to get sluffs to move on steeper terrain. The sluffs entrained about the top 6-8" of snow, but were very easy to mitigate with ski cuts. Otherwise the snowpack looks the best I've seen all season. Dug one pit of 31 degree NW aspect at 9800'. Total depth of the snowpack in this location was 210 cm. The most active weak layer was the near-surface faceted layer about 50 cm down (in areas such as Millcreek, this most likely would have been surface hoar at this layer.) Examining with a lens, the facets appear to be rounding and sintering. I got a CT27 Q1+, with a clean, yet hard shear at this layer. An ECT could not get the column to propagate and it only failed after banging really hard after 30 shoulder taps.

Observed Danger Rating:

Moderate

Forecast Danger Rating:

Moderate