Today we headed out to a northeast-facing slope and dug a pit at about 7,600 feet elevation. The slope angle was a 24 degrees, and we had a total snow depth of about 43 to 45 inches. That’s quite a bit less than we've finding at higher elevations and closer to the front range.
We got about 10 inches of fresh, light Utah powder overnight, and it was absolutely perfect for riding. Underneath that, we had about another 12 inches from Sunday night’s storm. Below that layer was an ice crust from Sunday's rain event, then a mix of older rain crusts and layers right down to the bottom of the snowpack, where we found some wet but well-consolidated faceted snow.
Test Results: In the avy pit, we ran a shovel shear test and found no significant shears. We did three compression tests and were surprised at how stable things were—no notable failures at all. Everything just compressed smoothly without any slabby breaks. We finished up with an extended column test—again, no failures even up to 30 hits. Overall, the snowpack seemed really stable at this location.
PSA: We didn’t see any signs of avalanches, no collapsing or whumpfing, and no red flags out there today. The only minor concern was some wind transport on the ridgelines, which was lightly filling in tracks between runs and could form wind slabs in certain spots. But overall, it stayed cool and the snow surface didn’t get wet or sticky. We had some intermittent snowfall throughout the day, and the sun tried to peek out now and then. We stayed away from the front range since it looked socked in and visibility was probably worse up there. We also found that the wind had significantly affected the front range on Tuesday and Wednesday so we opted for some lower elevation and protected tree riding.
In short, it was one of the best riding days we’ve had all year— light powder and just amazing conditions at mid elevations. Absolutely fantastic day out there!
