Observer Name
Donovan
Observation Date
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Avalanche Date
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Region
Salt Lake » Mill Creek Canyon » west porter
Location Name or Route
West Porter
Elevation
8,600'
Aspect
North
Slope Angle
40°
Trigger
Natural
Avalanche Type
Wet Loose
Avalanche Problem
Wet Snow
Weak Layer
New Snow
Depth
Unknown
Width
100'
Vertical
200'
Comments
Wet slide on shallow due North facing aspect, that likely initiated during today's extremely warm temps. No visible crown, and what looked to just be some roller balls off of the rocks above resulted in a big pile of heavy glop relative to a fairly small slope.
Comments
Dug a hasty pit, with very limited daylight, adjacent to the slide on a North aspect. There is still poor snowpack structure at the location with medium grained faceted snow ~100 cm below the snow surface, and another layer of smaller grained faceted snow ~60 cm below the snow surface. The top 25 cm was very wet.
Travel in the area is unpleasant as the saturated snow has made the old skin track unsupportable. Skiing above ~8000' was ok, below that was deep and miserable ski snarling glop. This was followed by worsening trap door glop on steeper aspects, that was borderline impassable.
Coordinates