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Observation Date
12/6/2012
Observer Name
mark white
Region
Salt Lake
Location Name or Route
Cardiac Bowl
Weather
Sky
Few
Wind Direction
Northwest
Wind Speed
Light
Weather Comments
Cold and mostly clear in the morning, clouding up in the afternoon.
Snow Characteristics
New Snow Depth
5"
New Snow Density
High
Snow Surface Conditions
Powder
Dense Loose
Wind Crust
Rain-Rime Crust
Damp
Snow Characteristics Comments
New snow since Sunday added up to about 5 inches of dense creamy snow in Cardiac Bowl. Snow was fairly creamy in the more wind sheltered areas, for example the lower roll out of Cardiac Bowl. Snow was a bit stiffer with less ski penetration in more exposed areas like the main Bowl.
Comments
Went to Cardiac Bowl to stay at high elevation 11,000ft, and North facing. The snowpack up in the Bowl was better than I had expected, 5" dense new snow sitting on a fairly stout windcrust produced by Sundays stong winds, and a few facet crust sandwiches underlying that all on top of a decent slab. Still seeing facets at the bottom of the pack but they have been compressed and are fairly rounded, not very loose, and bridged over by the slab. The crust facet sandwich is probably the weakest layer in the snow pack right now, but the high winds on sunday seemed to clean alot of the NSF out before they were capped off by the new dense snow. Still a weak layer, but I was expecting 5 or so inches of very loose facets under the windcrust, what I found was about 2 or 3 inches of loose, but not complete sugar under the crust. Not enough load on the weak layer now for avalanches, might be a different story with a decent load. No cracking or collapsing of the snow pack today, even on obvious wind slabs. Wind slabs seemed pretty welded in place today. Pic, minor damp activity on the South facing this morning.