Observation: Scotts Bowl 1/12/2012

Observer Name:

Bruce Tremper

Observation Date:

01/12/2012

Region:

Salt Lake
Park City Ridgeline
Scotts Bowl

Weather

Sky:

Clear

Wind Speed:

Light

Snow Characteristics

Snow Characteristic Comments:

Snow is all of the above, deep, bottomless faceted snow, wind slabs, sun crusts, rocks, stumps. Total snow depth is about 2 feet with no snow on south facing slopes. The drought continues...

Red Flags

Recent Avalanches

Cracking

Primary Concern

Primary Concern:

Persistent Slabs

Probability:

Considerable

Aspect:

North

Northeast

East

Northwest

Elevation:

High

Trend:

Same

Primary Concern Comments:

Areas of persistent slab remain and are sensitive to human triggers as evidenced by the control work today (see video).

snow_profile_location:

Comments - Photos - Videos (group 1)

I met the Park City ski patrol out doing avalanche control in the Scott's Bowl and Rino Bowl area. This area is unskied and uncontrolled this season. It's rare to be able to test a backcountry snowpack with explosives so it was a rare treat.

Persistent slabs were very sensitive and widespread as you can see from the video. Although these were triggered by explosives, they were quite sensitive and it would be easy for a person on skis, snowboard or snowmobile to trigger these. The video tells the story....

Video 1: