Planned Website Outage: The UAC website will be down for maintenance on June 17 from 2:00 - 7:00 PM MT.
Ad
The National Forest Service Logo
icon-add Observation
Forecasts
Logan Ogden Salt Lake Provo Uintas Skyline Moab Abajos Weather Archives How to read the forecast
Observations & Avalanches
Submit Observation Observations Explorer All Observations Avalanches Fatalities Weather Place Names Map Archives
Education
Avalanche Class List UAC Class List Online Classes Resources and Tutorials Avalanche Awareness Develop Skills
Events
Store
About
Contact Who we are Core Values Staff Board of Directors Past Forecasters Sponsors Annual Reports Sign In
Blog
icon-add Observation
Donate / Join

Observation: White Pine

Observation Date
12/13/2012
Observer Name
Jason Konigsberg/ Dan Costaschuk
Region
Salt Lake
Location Name or Route
White Pine
Weather
Sky
Overcast
Wind Direction
Southwest
Wind Speed
Light
Weather Comments
A few flakes, winds light in the drainage.
Snow Characteristics
Snow Surface Conditions
Dense Loose
Wind Crust
Snow Characteristics Comments
Supportable wind crusts, some dense powder in the trees.
Red Flags
Red Flags
Wind Loading
Poor Snowpack Structure
Red Flags Comments
Not much snow left to transport today but evidence of wind loading previously. Snowpack is generally thin (less then 3ft). Many rain crusts and faceting around these crusts. Most areas of poor structure (below 9700ft) did not have much of a slab on top in the areas we travelled.
Avalanche Problem #1
Problem
Persistent Weak Layer
Trend
Same
Problem #1 Comments
Many crossloaded areas and hard slabs left in place by recent winds. Due to the strong nature of the past winds the hard slabs are scattered and not very well connected. Lots of rocky thin areas contributed to pockety nature of slabs.
Comments
Photo below of a foot of bonded graupel in the snowpack. Just thought it was interesting.