Donate to the 2024 Spring Campaign to help rebuild the UAC website.

Avalanche: Timpanogos

Observer Name
Zach and Ben
Observation Date
Friday, December 31, 2021
Avalanche Date
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Region
Provo » Timpanogos
Location Name or Route
Silver Creek/Silver Lake area
Elevation
9,500'
Aspect
North
Trigger
Natural
Depth
6'
Width
700'
Comments
We came across what looked to be a natural avalanche this morning while skinning up the ridge to the W of Silver Creek area, E of the Three Temptations. The new snow was on top of the crown/bed/debris, so it either ran during the middle of the night or during the last storm or even before. The avalanche was very big: 4-6' deep and hundreds of feet wide.
Didn't feel comfortable getting a profile of the crown, but we had just finished digging a pit on an E aspect a few hundred feet down. In that pit (9350 ft, e facing, 22*), pic attached, we found a 10cm-tall layer of facets 20cm above the ground under a 90cm-tall, 1f slab. Was not able to accurately measure the size of the facets, sorry. We found a total snow height of 185 cm in that spot.
Please take that profile with a grain of salt. While we dug in what seemed like a meadow/wind-sheltered area, the snow height was much higher than other areas we skinned/skied that day.
We broke trail and got fresh tracks all day but didn't get any cracking or collapsing in the snow.
Coordinates