Travel was from Aspen Grove to Bobs Knob and the Primrose Overlook Saddle and north beneath UFO1 and UFO2 toward UFO3. We ascended the southeast face toward the ridgeline. We poked holes in the snow at roughly 9500' and found dramatic spatial variability. My profile is shown above and in the photo below. It was the worst snow structure I have seen for awhile and not inconsistent with other profiles that Meisenheimer and others have found, particularly on the north side of Timp. Timpanogos has demonstrated the poorest structure to date and the depth of snow at my profile and adjacent terrain was 90cm - clearly a repeater zone. (Other depths were probed at 150-200cm...but again lots of spatial variability and lots of old crowns in the vicinity.) Bottom Line: highly variable snowpack. A lot of steep terrain has been skiied in recent days in the Provo mountains, but it's been a challenging year with a complex snowpack, particularly in parts of the Provo mountains. It's always worth pulling out your shovel to determine the snowpack structure and perform some snow tests. Even though we did not elicit any cracking or collapsing on this structure, we pulled the plug and went for different terrain.

I suspect this and other layers may become active with next week's dramatic warm-up.

Not far from my profile was Bo Torrey's. Comments and photos below: Upper snowpack has soft settled snow above a melt-freeze crust with weak snow below. Similarly below the dust layers is another melt-freeze layer with weak snow below. Not a concern in this exact snowpit but something to keep an eye towards as temperatures warm and free water works its way down through the snowpack. ECTX

Covington found a not dissimimiilar profile 100' higher on east facing....lacking depth hoar but ECTX on the dust layer.

We came across the reported avalanche at the top of Bobs Knob from a few days ago (Torrey photo) and noted some other recent natural wind slabs in the radical terrain of Primrose Cirque (Torrey photo).

---

Two naturals in UFO3 on or near March 6th: looker's right is a natural wind slab; looker's left is a slab avalanche that failed in old faceted snow. UDOT Provo pic