Meteorologists nailed it: low stratus, with periods of clear above. Sky was obscured with very light snowfall as we started our tour at 7,000 feet at Aspen Grove. At the top of UFO bowls at 10,200 feet we stood in the sun, temps warmer than the 2 previous days, and looked at the top of a valley cloudbank.

Facets:

Todays tour was a show of facets, and there are two kinds to talk about.

First, the old October/November snow that faceted on NW through E facing slopes and was then finally buried in the Thanksgiving storm. This is the layer we’ve been watching all winter, and its location and behavior on our tour from Aspen Grove to the UFO bowl ridge was predictable. Photo’s below show the location of old snow.

We were hoping to ski north-northeast, so our ascent included quick North and northeast pits at 8,200’, 8900’, 9,400’, and 10,100’ to check on the basal facets. Up to 9,400’ the layer was damp, interrupted by ground features, and unreactive in tests (ECTX, CTX).

In the high elevation pit, however, the facets were dry and able to propagate a fracture. On the 5th tap from the shoulder the extended column failed about 10cm from the ground with roughly a 100cm of slab above In 40-degree rocky terrain, in a large path, we thought the “scary” in “scary-moderate” was too much and chose a different route.

Second, the shallow snowpack that has faceted in the cold weather in localized, perhaps wind scoured terrain. Much of the high elevation southeast and east terrain that we sampled is composed of 3 snow types: new snow on top, a wind crust (or not, depending on location), and a mess of 1mm-2mm facets below. Where the crust was absent you could push a pole basket down to the ground. Where it was present the skinning was challenging, with stellars over smooth surface. Since we hadn’t paid attention to this aspect on our ascent, we hemmed and hawed about skiing bigger east lines off the summit. Small patches of shallow facet skiing were marvelous, if bad for ski bases.

Thin Snowpack:

We were surprised how thin the east-aspects were in upper UFO area. Why so shallow? Certainly Provo has faired poorly in recent storms. In the last 7 days they recorded 0.4 inches of SWE at 8,900’, compared to 0.9 (more than twice as much) at a similar elevation in Big Cottonwood.

But this didn’t seem to fully explain it. With HS around 110 for most of our NE pits, the 35-60cm in upper east might be a function of wind. We guessed that the strong Southerly winds from early Dec 22nd could stripped the southeast facing subridges of the UFO bowls and loaded the north and northeast facing.

Below: thin snowpack, soft turns in shallow facets.