Awesome conditions today. Low angle terrain is skiing great. The dense snow capped with the light density snow is fast and fun! Slope angle is your friend, pull out your inclinometer and actually see how steep the slope is you want to ride or ski. Blower pow on the sled as well, just watch out for some of the giant wind drifts that were formed this week in open terrain and terrain well off the ridge lines, my back hurts thinking about getting stuck and having to dig my sled out.

Column and extended column tests showed some weaknesses in the top meter of snow but they didn't want to propagate across an extended column. My pit tests today reflected the faceted snow that formed at the end of January as the weakest interface. Although failing with hard effort, ECTP23, the column popped with a lot of energy and slid into the pit. I found preserved surface hoar and surface facets at this interface. Big red flag for me.

The early January and December weaknesses are getting deeper in the pack and ECT's probably don't properly reflect the strength or lack thereof of these layers. What I am still seeing are clean shears in extended columns and with shovel shears on these layers on 1mm-2mm faceted grains that are just beginning to round out. (PHOTO BELOW) These layers are scary deep and still problematic and something to be hyper-aware of.

Last night's snow didn't add enough water weight to make any kind of difference in snow stability but this week's dense snow and massive amount of wind loading left a lot of slopes teetering in the balance between sliding and not sliding and are just waiting for some kind of trigger. You don't want to be the trigger in this type of setup as avalanches are going to be deep and probably wide. It again comes down to wise terrain choices, staying off of, out from under or connected to steep wind drifted terrain. It's really hard to reign yourself in when conditions are this good but patience is still the name of the game for me. Craig's forecasts have been spot on and reflect what's going on out there, just have a look at some of the avalanches we've had this season in the Uintas, its downright scary.

On a lighter note, the Uintas are stacked for mid February!