A few new wind slabs will be created by today’s increasingly strong southerly winds, easy to trigger. They will be loaded on top of Monday’s pencil hard wind slabs, which are along ridge lines and scattered in open bowls and the mid elevations. The older, hard wind slabs are stubborn, but can still be triggered by a person, and be anywhere from a few inches to two feet deep. Hard slabs are different – they almost always break above you, and often on the second or third person.

Cornices are becoming more widespread along ridgelines – continuing to grow with today’s increasing southerly winds. Cornices often break back further than expected, on to what looks like flat terrain. So give them a wide berth and avoid travel below them.

Recent upper elevation hard wind slab avalanche. Eric Trembeth photo.

While many steep lines have been skied and ridden in the Salt Lake and Park City area mountains, avalanches continue to be triggered on buried layers of faceted snow. Many slopes have poor structure – soft sugary, weak layers, both mid-pack and near the ground. It seems some of the steep slopes are just waiting for a trigger – and which slopes will slide are variable and unpredictable.

A few deeper, wider slides broke near the ground this week, 2 to 5 feet deep. These natural avalanches were on Mill Canyon peak, in Mineral Fork and White Pine. They can be triggered by a person, smaller slides or cornice falls. Avoid, steep shallow, rocky, wind loaded terrain, where the snowpack is thinner and more suspect. If you trigger a persistent slab avalanche it will likely be unsurvivable.

Cracking and collapsing are bulls-eye clues to instability, but these clues may not be present, and snow pit tests could be unreliable.