Bill Hunt

Ogden » Snowbasin Backcountry

Mt Allen

My general impression of Mt Allen today was of a rocky minefield with punchy windslab in between the rocks, overlaying a very rotten 20cm layer of faceted snow on the ground. I stayed on belay near a ridge the majority of the afternoon, doing belayed cuts, booting compaction, and a couple pits. The severely faceted layer on the ground was about 20cm thick. Snowpack depth was only 100 to 130 cm in a half dozen probe measurements, and a couple pits. I was a little surprised not to see any cracking or settling. In hindsight this may be because I was at an upper elevation area that gets wind-hammered. A mid-snowpack windslab was so hard that at times I was booting on it, not breaking through. Deep slab instability seemed like a low probability but very high consequence possibility in the areas travelled. Below, a belayed cut that did not produce cracking.

Below, the rotten faceted layer on the ground was about 20cm thick. Total snowpack was less than I expected, ~110cm here. Could not get an ECT to propagate or crack (isolation on the back was not ideal).

Toothy rocks everywhere, showing the thin coverage. Forecaster Note - Bill has been a backcountry rider for nearly 30 years and I appreciate that he is intentional in his snowpack assessment and intimacy with the - more often than not - extreme terrain he chooses to ride in. In other words, he's doing the work.

Considerable

High