Observation Date
3/30/2013
Observer Name
Bill Hunt
Region
Ogden
Location Name or Route
Snowbasin Backcountry/Banana chute
Weather
Sky
Few
Weather Comments
Another beautiful warm sunny day.
Snow Characteristics
Snow Surface Conditions
Dense Loose
Damp
Snow Characteristics Comments
Still surprisingly nice snow in shaded north-facing upper elevations; especially 9400 to 8400'. Heavier but not too sloppy down to around 7500', wetter below there, but its lower angle down there (no old wet debris below 7000', because of the gentler slope angles). We got about a half mile into the runout before having to take off the boards; estimating that was around 6400'. Then we took our time on the hike out, which took 2 hours.
We saw some interesting graupel/hard crusts, with some areas remelted back into graupel, in the mid-elevations.
Avalanche Problem #1
Problem
Wet Snow
Trend
Same
Problem #1 Comments
We did the Banana chute, the prominent NW facing chute starting from 9400 feet on Mt Allen. Starting around noon, the boot trail up Mt Allen was still quite icy. There are a number of more shaded skiers-left options, some of which still had hard crusts, in particular one old wet slide bed surface was icy hard, even at 1:30 PM. Minor rollerballing that we pushed down was the only activity seen today. In the Mt Ogden upper bowl, it looks like there was a natural rollerball cycle yesterday afternoon. There was some debris with more dirt in it in Hells; but I didn't get a close look at it; not sure if that was a newer slide, or the previous one melting out more.
In the Banana chute, a number of old wet slides that came down before the last storm cycle showed the wet slide potential in there. The largest slide came in from skiers right, around 7500 feet.
Comments
Here are two old wet slides coming together, the larger one coming in from skiers right, starting on NW facing slopes around 8400'. Some of this slide went to the ground.
The deposition spread out into a few different areas, over a few hundred yards.
