Dylan bishop-berry

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » Grizzly Gulch

Grizzly gulch

From Alta I took the service road up to grizzly gulch and followed the power lines up to the saddle. New snow from storm 12/3-12/4 left about 12-14" of settled snow on top of a rain crust. Did not see any human triggered slides but on the most northern aspects I did notice some prior movement of the storm slab. It looks like this happened mid storm and the debris was covered by a little fresh snow. A pit dug on a west facing slope showed new snow sitting on top of rain crust. Beneath the rain crust was 8" of very loose surgery facets. Another freeze crust below the facets showed pretty strong adhesion all the way to ground 8-10" or so. Was able to get snow to react with CT and ECT test. CT showed movement below the rain crust. On ECT it reacted above the crust but did not propogate. A second pit dug facing due east showed same snow layers and failures again at the rain crust layer. I though there would be more avalanche activity but my guess is the snow from this storm was so light it didn't weight enough to get things moving.

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