We spent the day riding in the Central Bear River Range and dug a pit on a north-facing slope at about 8,200 feet. The slope angle was 23 degrees, and we had around 70 inches of total snow depth. At that elevation, we ran into a roughly one-inch thick, stiff rain crust from the weekend. Higher up—around 9,000 to 9,200 feet—riding was actually decent, with a few inches of shallow graupel. But below about 8,300 feet, that crust made conditions tough—rock-hard, hard to even kick a boot in.
We didn’t see a lot of avalanche activity, though we did spot one slab on a very steep north-facing slope around 8,600 feet. It was about 20–40 feet wide, maybe a foot deep, and slid a couple hundred vertical feet—no picture, unfortunately. Wind was a big factor today: lots of debris from trees, sastrugi on the ridges, and scoured snow. But in protected areas, the riding was decent—the first picture gives you an idea of how "deep" it was, haha.
Test Results: In the pit at 8,200 feet, we had compression test failures at 19 and 23 taps, about two feet down, just below a crust on faceted snow. Deeper, around three feet down, we had failures at 21 and 24 taps on a really bad faceted layer. When we did the extended column test, I had to pound hard—by the 30th hit, we got full propagation around 32 inches down, and it slid out easily once I tugged (see the video and picture 2). But I was hitting it harder than usual, so I’d assess avalanche danger as moderate. The slab is thick—hard to trigger, but if it did go, it’d be big. We stayed off big slopes. We saw snowmobilers on big terrain, but no new slides.
Overall, the day was windy, variable conditions, but above that crust line, the riding was decent. We had a good day out there under beautiful blue skies!
