Observation: Gobblers

Observation Date
2/25/2013
Observer Name
Kikkert
Region
Salt Lake
Location Name or Route
Gobblers Knob/Alexander Basin
Weather
Sky
Clear
Wind Direction
Northwest
Wind Speed
Light
Weather Comments
Clear, perfect morning. Just light northwesterly winds along the Gobblers ridgeline in the AM.
Snow Characteristics
Snow Characteristics Comments

About 10 inches from Saturday's storm at the upper elevations. Was surprised at how little wind affect there was on Gobblers and the cold clear night faceted out and loosened up the top couple inches.

Avalanche Problem #1
Problem #1 Comments

Traveled from Bowman Fork to Gobblers, then exited out Alexander Basin. Would hesitate to say there were really any red flags. As mentioned above, wind effect was mostly minor, even in wind exposed areas. New snow was mostly light density and not very slabby. A pit on Gobbler's face, N facing at 9,400', revealed a still pretty shallow snowpack (130 cm), as is pretty normal for Gobblers. Still several easily identifiable weak layers, with the late January facets the most prominent. My first impression was that I would get failure on the late Jan facets, but the layer has strengthened a decent amount and could only get stubborn low quality shears in CTs and no failures or propagation on this layer in ECTs. Could get failure on the facets formed prior to last week's storms, but no propagation as there was not much of a slab, and the facets there were not overly weak here to begin with (likely destroyed a bit by pre-frontal winds). Quick hand pit in Alexander (Toots to boot) showed a similar snowpack. Overall, would say the danger was mostly low where we traveled, out of the wind, with moderate still the more appropriate call for more wind loaded terrain.

Only sign of avalanche activity was debris from a long running sluff or possibly a soft slab in Depth Hoar bowl in Alexander that likely ran during peak snowfall on Saturday.