Observation: Salt Lake

ZSmith

Salt Lake

10420

Toured 10420 today from the Guardsman gate. Coverage is still thin but the new batch of 3-5 inches of dense snow and graupel made skinning and riding much more enjoyable in comparison to what we had on the ground pre-storm. Noticed snow localized cracks and small collapses on the skin track and got a pretty decent collapse on the ridge just above Lane’s Leap. Otherwise snow felt pretty stable. The two ECT’s performed both fully propagated on the PWL at the bottom of the snowpack. The snowpack I examined now has a top layer of dense snow with two layers of graupel sandwiching a thin melt/freeze layer. Below that snow was fist to 4 finger hard except for a roughly 1-2cm crust layer roughly 20-25 cm down which was in the 2-3 finger range. Wind gusts were transporting snow but generally the winds were light and well behaved. Skiing on the ridge was largely shark free and surfily enjoyable. Left on the road. Bonus fun included rounding the hairpin at the entrance to the connector to Scott’s Pass and nearly colliding with a young bull moose. We were both startled and he ran a short distance and then stopped. I took that as my cue to abandon the road and ski the south facing sage and aspen slope. Once I got clear of the undergrowth and found a somewhat open line the snow actually skied pretty well (minus the shrubbery).

Moderate

Moderate