Observation: Weber Canyon

The steep temperature gradients caused by two weeks of clear skies has rotted the entire snowpack on the shady slopes (northwest, north, northeast and east facing slopes). There are very few layers left in the snowpack because the faceting process is chewing them up. In some of the shallower spots, you easily sink through to the ground in faceted snow but most places have enough buried layers that are strong enough to hold you up but they are actively rotting away. What a mess. It's not a hazard now because there is no slab on top but if the wind blows or it snows or both, there is going to be lots of trouble.

Most of the shady slopes have lots of tracks on them. People have jumped into many slopes that are prime avalanche terrain with zero tolerance for error (with trees and terrain traps below that would be close to zero chance for survival). No one is triggering avalanches and the snowpack is quite stable in that area, so this is the time to enjoy those slopes.

There are old, hard wind slabs on many of the wind-exposed slopes but they seem dormant and unreactive. Even though they have faceted snow beneath them, It's been too many days since they were deposited and they lack any energy to crack or slide, at least the ones we crossed today. I'm always a bit suspicious about lingering, hard, wind slabs so I habitually avoid them on steep slopes anyway, but for now, these dragons seem content to snooze.

There are deep layers of surface hoar (sparkly frost) and deep layers of near-surface faceted snow on all the low elevation terrain especially around streams, so these areas will be especially dangerous if the wind creates a slab on top of them or with the next storm.