Greg Gagne

Salt Lake

Mid-BCC Canyon

(Sorry in advance for the not-as-useful observation. No photos and/or pit profiles.) Traveled in three different drainages today after commencing a Spruces-based tour. This is my first outing in mid-BCC this season and was curious how the snowpack compared to Millcreek and upper Little Cottonwood. Overall about a meter (~3') of snow above about 8500' with two or three different rain crusts noted. I was finding these crusts typically down about 45-60 cms (18"-24") below the snow surface. Similar to what Trent was finding yesterday, the crusts become much thinner as you approach 9000' in mid-BCC. Underneath the new snow from overnight I was finding some wind deposits from the strong winds the previous day, yet they were not that thick (usually 5-10 cms (2"-4"), they were not that widespread at these elevations, nor were they cracking. Most of my travels this morning showed the upper 45 cms of the snowpack as inverted with dense new snow sitting on top of lighter-density snow from the weekend. The only collapsing I could get was in this layer of lighter-density snow. I could not get any collapsing on the buried facet/crust layers. Today was not a day of in-your-face instability. Actually it was rather quiet - no cracking or collapsing, no recent avalanches, no wind loading, and only modest amounts of new snow. It is only when you dig down and look at our 4 or 5 lemon snowpack structure do you identify the current persistent weak layer issues we are dealing with. (For the further curious - the December issue of The Avalanche Review (TAR) has an excellent article on "Avalanche Problems Defined" which includes coverage of persistent slab instabilities. A selection of TAR is available at http://www.americanavalancheassociation.org/tar/TAR31_2_Cover.pdf . Better yet, become a subscriber.) It's not all doom and gloom. The dense snow makes for relatively easy trail breaking and the turns are fast and fun on lower-angled slopes. I may be in the minority on this, but I was rather pleased to see us get less snow than originally forecasted as it means for plenty of excellent and safe skiing and travel conditions.