Looking down the small slide from the crown. It stopped at the trees. You can see our group off to the side where they regrou

It was easy to crack some hangfire but it was not steep enough for it to get going.

Out on my day off with some friends. Our party kicked off a small, soft slab on surface hoar on a very gentle slope angle of only 29 degrees. No one was caught.

I had looked for surface hoar throughout the day because there were some surface hoar avalanches in the Ogden area mountains. Despite lots of poking around, I did not find any and even one full depth pit in a representative spot showed very solid snow. But we were watching our slope steepness very carefully and never got on anything much over 30 degrees all day. But when several members of the party gathered to the side of a small opening in the trees to regroup, they noticed the slide coming down to the side of them. No one is sure who triggered it. Since it was on such a gentle slope it moved slowly and was not much of a hazard.

It slid on 5 mm surface hoar on a 1 finger bed surface, 1 foot deep, soft slab, starting about 10 feet wide and fanning out to 20 feet and moved only 100 feet down the slope. I measured the average slope steepness by sighting along the slope and it was an honest-to-god 29 degrees. There may have been one 5 foot section that was 30 degrees, but nothing steeper.

We did not find any other slopes with surface hoar except one tiny slab along a sub ridge.

Surface hoar is notoriously tricky because it can exist in pockets that can surprise you. It also notoriously runs on gentle slope angles than you would expect from other kinds of weak layers. I measured this one at only 29 degrees. Interesting avalanche.