I was curious to see what the snow was like in the outlying area of the Park City Ridgeline where I knew there was some October snow that had not melted. I was not expecting quite the mess that I found with multiple faceted layers between various strengths of crusts. My pit test results were not that shocking with 3 different layers failing on a compression test and an ECT that did not propagate on the layer I was most concerned about which was the old snow surface facets that were buried by this storm.

In this location the snowpack currently lacks a slab. If a slab forms on top of these weak layers I would expect it to be much more sensitive and reactive.

The biggest concern for today was still the very shallow showpack and the high likelihood of hitting a rock or tree.