Observation: Cardiff Fork

Observation Date
2/27/2015
Observer Name
mark white
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Cardiff Fork
Location Name or Route
Cardiff Fork
Weather
Sky
Overcast
Precipitation
Light Snowfall
Wind Direction
Northwest
Wind Speed
Light
Weather Comments
Broken skies in the morning with the sun shinning through intermitently, light snow, flat light around 1:00pm, back to broken skies by 2:00pm. You could feel the heat and hear the light density new snow shrinking rapidly when the sun was out. New snow during the day added up to a whopping 1 inch.
Snow Characteristics
New Snow Depth
6"
New Snow Density
Low
Snow Surface Conditions
Powder
Faceted Loose
Wind Crust
Melt-Freeze Crust
Damp
Snow Characteristics Comments

6 inches of very low density powder evenly distributed through most of Cardiff, but in most cases that's not what you were riding on, bottom feeding was the theme of the day, you could choose your poison either wind crust, melt-freeze crust or my preferred bottom, soft snow that had faceted before the storm.

Comments

Only instabilities noted in Cardiff today was sluffing of the new snow on various bed surfaces, the sluffing was much more pronounced and substantial on the harder bed surfaces. Didn't give much respects to the sluffing today until I skied into my own sluff on a steep portion of LSB NE facing thinking I could blow right through it, I soon discovered that the sluff was packing a little more punch than I had planed on and almost got knocked down, after a minute of doing a one legged kickin chicken I was able to ski off to the side and let it pass. The sluffs on the hard bed surfaces were running fairly fast and entraining enough snow to knock you down and take you over a cliff if you were in radical terrain, no big deal if you had a clean runout. Would expect the sluffing to be less active tomorrow. Of note rocks are starting to show their ugly heads again and the light density new snow is great at camouflaging them, but not padding them. Photos, watched someone tag a rock on the Ivory rock slabs and set off a decent sluff when they fell, luckily the were on the uphill side of it, snapped the photo when the sluff went over the rock band. Other sluffing in steep terrain, a photo of LSB NE facing note that the natural hot spot or fumerol mid slope next to the ski track has melted out quite a bit for this time of year, the snow was damp when I skied next to it, usually don't see that until May.

Today's Observed Danger Rating
Low
Tomorrows Estimated Danger Rating
Low