All I can say is Wow. Yes, I'm talking about the many close calls in the backcountry yesterday. More on this in a minute.
Skies are mostly clear ahead of a weak, dry cold front approaching from the west.
Mountain temps are in the low to mid 20s Winds picked up ahead of this weak weather feature and are blowing 15-20mph from the west along the upper ridgelines.
Scorching temps and direct sun severely damaged the solar aspects yesterday, but shady sheltered slopes continue to hold soft settled powder.
For today, we'll see partly cloudy skies, light northwest winds and mountain temperatures cooling to a more reasonable 25°F or so. (to be precise). A blue-collar storm system arrives late Friday into early Saturday that should bring another round of meager snow. We'll take it.
I'm not sure, as guide John Mletchnig said yesterday, that the handwriting could be more on the wall.
After publishing yesterday's forecast, the avalanches and close calls continued without pause or interruption throughout the afternoon. Humor me for a moment as I pull the key point of an essay I pieced together a few years ago, Who Actually Assumes the Risk? When we make decisions in the mountains, we ought to pause for a moment to consider who else might be impacted if things go south: friends, family, the SAR teams who have signed on to put themselves at risk to pull people out of avalanche debris piles. Who else?
We heard about many more human triggered avalanches in the backcountry yesterday. Each of these was big enough...or in terrain big enough to kill a person.
Most of these stepped into the old faceted snow from November and were 1-2' deep and up to 150' wide. Aspects ranged from northwest to north to southeast at 9400' and above.
The "Highlights": (MORE photos and observations of avalanches can be found in the Menu bar above. Locations found
HERE)
- A lone skier was caught and carried in an avalanche in West Monitor Bowl yesterday in plain sight of the two avalanches triggered there the day before.
- At least one skier's tracks were taken out on the Hanging Snowfield of Squaretop in the Canyons periphery of the Park City Ridgeline. Note that there is another avalanche on the "Wall of Voodoo" as depicted by the red arrow.