Observation: Cardiac Bowl

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Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Cardiff Fork » Cardiac Bowl

Cardiac Ridge and Bowl, Devils Castle

I’ve been to Cardiac twice in the last week and a visit to Devils Castle as well. The first trip to Cardiac was a week ago today and I found enough snow to travel on the S but had to walk down. The Bowl and the ridge were both wind affected and fairly supportable, I dug a pit in the top of the bowl with a clean shear at the new snow old snow interface, the weak layer was facets above a rain crust. I returned there there on Tuesday and the S facing was dirt for the most part except for a little melt/ freeze crust on the upper SE terrain.The high, shady N facing terrain in upper Cardiff has basically faceted out to the ground and lost its integrity. The more easterly facing terrain on the ridge had a thin heat crust with facets underlying it and most of the windboard is faceting out. W it’s mostly dirt or melt/ freeze crust. In Devils Castle I found similar conditions to the N facing in Cardiac, decomposing and faceting windboard or completely faceted out snowpack to the dirt. ~~~~ The coverage above 9300ft is fairly uniform and will be suspect on the N end of the compass if it receives a fresh load of snow. ~~~~ Photos: pit from Cardiac Bowl, old slides in Cardiac, coverage in Cardiac and Devils Castle and a video from Tuesday of the faceted snowpack.