I visited the Skyline on Thursday to have a look at how much snow is on the ground. Snotel weather stations portrayed the northern end of the Skyline as having a fairly thin snow cover with around 10". The Fairview Canyon/Skyline Summit area is definitely very thin still. There is only about 5" at the Miller Flat trailhead. Around Wedding Ring Ridge (10,000'), there is only 8-10". It is fairly faceted snow (sugary) and will most likely become weaker prior to the next storm.

I also went up Ephraim Canyon to have a look. Snotel sites showed a deeper snowpack which definitely seemed like it was the case from my own observations. GBRC Meadows (at about 10,000') was reading 20". I spoke to a snowmobiler who was heading up. He said his friend said there was 22" up high. Unfortunately, I did not bring a machine and was not able to get up high to see for myself.

I did notice some avalanche activity on this steep road bank which most likely occurred during the last storm. It is possible that a snowmobiler remotely triggered this from the road on his way by. Knowing the habits of shallow snowpacks harboring weak faceted snow, I was intrigued to see what the weak layer was. It was not faceted snow. The small slab failed at the bottom of the new snow on top of a melt freeze crust. The weak layer appeared to be just low density stellar crystals. I suspect it released during a very intense period of heavy snowfall.

When I see this type of propagation, I usually expect to find faceted snow as the weak layer. However, under the right conditions, new stellar crystals can behave the same way. The difference is, a weak layer of new stellar crystals will stabilize fairly rapidly where faceted crystals can and often do produce a persistent weak layer which can fail days or weeks after a storm.

A snotel station on the extreme southern end of the Skyline, Farnsworth Lake was sitting at 30" of new snow. This was the most of any snotel station that I could find in Utah. I was not able to get down there to look.

The point is, now I have a mental map of the overall coverage. The northern Skyline is very thin and the pack gets deeper the farther south you go, given similar elevations. Thinner areas are more prone to the snow becoming weak so it will be interesting to see if this difference in depths from north to south plays a role during the next storm.