Observation: Monitors 1/7/2012

Observer Name:

mark white

Region:

Salt Lake
Park City Ridgeline
Monitors

Observation Date:

01/07/2012

Location or Route:

West and South Monitor

Weather

Sky:

Overcast

Precipitation:

Light Snowfall

Wind Direction:

Northwest

Wind Speed:

Light

Snow Characteristics

New Snow Depth:

New Snow Density:

Low

Snow Surface Conditions:

Powder

Snow Characteristic Comments:

Snow amounts seemed overly exagerated by the resorts, must be a bad year for business. 1" in the upper parking lot of Solitude went to a whopping 3" at the top of West Monitor. Super light density snow with very little weight, not enough wind to load up any aspects or to form a slab. Basically same as the rest of the week with a dusting of snow to cover up the old brown surface.

Red Flags

Collapsing

Red Flag Comments:

Couple localized collapses on mostly flat south facing terrain

snow_profile_location:

Comments - Photos - Videos (group 1)

No wind transport meant no cornices to kick. New snow not bonded well to the old surface which consisted of wind crust and wind slab on the N end of the compass. shollow surface sluffs could be initiated by just pushing a ski load of snow down the slope. Sluffs ran fairly fast, and traveled quite a distance, but did not entrain much snow and were not powerful enough to cause any problems. No gouging into facets because there capped by wind slab or crust. seemed like were gonna need a real storm or a person skiing down the slope to overload the slab.