Travel today was in East Bowl of Silver Fork. Winds were fairly strong out of the NW while skinning up the ridgeline from Alta earlier in the morning, so we were on the lookout for fresh wind deposits. But in fact we found alot less wind deposited snow than we anticipated. There were some soft slabs along the ridgelines up to 30-45 cms in depth and they were easy to fracture with ski cuts, but they were not very widespread and we were not finding them down off of ridgelines.

Storm amounts are about 25 - 30 cms (10-12") with dense snow from Wednesday that was well bonded to the old snow surface. I was getting easy shears in a graupel layer in the top 10-15 cms of new snow at its interface with Wednesday's storm snow, and the new snow was cracking on steeper aspects (PHOTO), likely due to relatively high PI rates in the early morning. But by the time we were skiing out at 1 pm, there were no instabilities in the storm snow.

Digging down below the old snow surface on upper elevation north aspects I am still finding dry snow and this is consistent with what I have been seeing over the past 7 days and what Brett alluded to in his 3/21 forecast - it appears upper elevation northerly aspects still have not had a dramatic warm up.

We were finding damp snow with some rollerballs while skiing back to Alta in the early afternoon.

Overall today's hazard was a "Very Manageable Moderate" with storm snow instabilities and some recent wind loading, but these were easily mitigated with ski cuts on steeper aspects. Without any sun and additional wind, I would imagine the hazard would in fact go down to Low later in the day.

Looking ahead, primary avalanche concerns would be related to any warm up and/or increase in winds. Hopefully forecasted cooler temps over the weekend will preserve the soft snow.

*** If you lost a compass at the pass above East Bowl of Silver Fork - I have it. Please contact me - "[email protected]"