On Thursday, Eastern front avalanche hunters Jason and Dave stomped around Upper Weber Canyon yesterday and found fresh wind slabs forming along the leeward side of upper elevation ridges (image pictured above). Reactive to the additional weight of a person, yesterday's slabs broke 12"-18" deep, failing on a layer of light density snow, and ran a surprisingly long distance. Dave noted.... "given the density of the new snow, the wind slabs were a bit more connected then would otherwise be expected with these wind speeds."

Yesterday's snow fell straight out of the sky, but the light, blower pow is covering up old wind drifts formed on Thursday, making them hard to detect... and that's where it gets a bit tricky. While I think today's avy danger is pretty straight-forward, don't get fooled into thinking fresh, shallow snow instabilities are all you're dealing with. In upper elevation leeward terrain, underneath that fluff, lurks an old drift or two that may break deeper and wider than you might expect. Whilst cracking at or below our skis, boards, or sleds the best way to manage this setup is to simply look for and avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum.

We are trending in the right direction and recent snowpack stability tests along with the lack of avalanches failing on weak snow near the ground suggest we're turning the corner. Also streaming in from the good news department is this... most terrain where the snowpack is becoming thick and strong, deep dangerous avalanches are becoming harder to trigger. All encouraging news for sure, but we've got to remember there's a lot of terrain that makes up the landscape of the western Uinta range and I'm not entirely convinced all slopes are good to go. However, our theories will get tested as the next series of storms should add a substantial amount of snow and water and help us determine the strength of our deeply buried weak layers. In the meantime, let's reflect on how persistent weak layers work and remember that all I need to do is find a shallow, weak portion of the snowpack, perhaps around a rock or bush that I can't see underneath the snow, collapse the slope (whoomph), and now I'm staring down the barrel of a dangerous avalanche. What I don't know... where exactly these weak points exist in the snowpack, but steep rocky slopes are certainly high on the suspect terrain list and should be avoided today.