The primary goal of the day was to look at southwest aspects and see if we could get any results on the current persistent weak layers that exist across the entire Wasatch. We dug on a southwest aspect at 9,385' in an area that didn’t seem to have much wind effect or travel.

In our pit, we found primarily right-side-up snow sitting atop preserved stellars almost 2' down (similar to what Dave & Dave found in Little Cottonwood today), which rested on a thick layer of preserved graupel between 2–5mm in size. Beneath that was a stout melt-freeze crust, and below the crust, we found faceted grains of varying hardness from early season.

We got an ECTP28 failing below the graupel layer and beneath the stout crust within some of the smaller grain facets. I was surprised to see no failure within the graupel, despite it being widespread throughout Big Cottonwood. This continues to highlight the spatial variability across the range, but I’d give southwest aspects a second thought when stepping out.