Toured Porter Fork the last 5 days. Today, Wednesday, it was humid and 45 degrees at the trailhead at 9:30am, there were stray snow flakes at 11:30 at 7500 feet, with snow commencing in earnest at noon at 8000 feet. Between noon and 3pm when I exited about 3 inches of dense snow fell at 9000 feet that did not bond well to the lighter snow below. The rain snow line seems to have got as high as 8000 feet during the early afternoon.

Sunday and Monday the snow was excellent cold dry powder that began to facet. Tuesday's warm up rounded but did not eliminate the facets.

The snowpack is about 7 feet deep at 9000 feet in Porter Fork. Columns have been failing on the Feb 2 surface layer, now about 2 feet down, and the Valentines layer, now about 1 foot down. My sense is the pack is basically bombproof: deep, strong, stable, except where it isn't. It seems like over 90 percent of the pack in the Central Wasatch, maybe 99 percent, has that deep basal stability we expect in March. One suspect example is the east face of Gobblers Knob into Alexander Basin, above and south of depth hoar bowl. This slope is a long steep hanging convexity that has avalanched twice that I know of on October snow. I don't think this slope can be skied after heavy loading events.

The hazard today on the low angle less winded benign line below about 9500 feet where I skied seemed low. The summit of Gobblers was getting blasted by the south winds, with the main line and Bobslid getting cross loaded and Davis Gulley getting directly loaded. The hazard off the peak down any of the big steep lines seemed considerable. White Snake might have been fine, but it was too windy for me to be even slightly interested in looking at it.

NWS forecast for upper Porter Fork for the 24 hours from 5pm Weds to 5pm Thurs is 7 to 15 inches of snow with wind gusts to 40 mph overnight but subsiding during the day Thursday. If snow and wind is on the lower side of this forecast the hazard on steep wind exposed slopes will be considerable. If the 24 hour snow total is 15 inches and winds continue to blast start zones, the hazard may be high in steep wind loaded terrain.