1. Light snow around 2 pm (There is always another day to complete and objective!!)
2. hanging clouds over the ben lomond ridge line.
Today our party started at the North Ogden Divide trail head with intentions to tour up to the Ben Lomond Shoulder and ski down Cutler ridge on an observational tour. We planned to look at locations were surface hoar was preserved and still reactive. We were also interested if the Rain/wet snow crust was reactive on the ridge line. Due to visibility issues above tree line we changed out plan and made some great turns in low angle terrain on East aspects.
We found possible surface hoar in most places we looked at 7200-7800 ft E-N aspects but it was not reactive in CT or ECT pit tests. We did see some reactivity under the rain crust from the rain event on Jan 29th at the 7200- 7800 ft elevation. These positive results on ECTs were isolated. Most places below 7200 feet the crust is quite thick, and hard to imagine avalanches stepping down below it do to the hard crust. Above 7800 ft we did not see a rain crust, so not as much of a concern there either. We also saw some very small Point release avalanches in the new snow running on the slick bed surface just from skiing 30 degree terrain. In steeper terrain I would imagine these entraining more snow and could be dangerous in terrain traps.
Heavy precip rates today S2. These were unexpected. I believe they were due to orographic lift in the Ogden area mountains. The new snow depth was around 6" around 8,000 ft. Weather stations are reporting 3 in at most but I do believe there was more than that today. The snow was very low density so with any prefrontal winds tonight we could see wind drifts on the lee ward side of ridges.
Talking with members of our party we waned from Moderate to Considerable avalanche danger on all upper elevation aspects. Our only concerns were wind slabs that still could be reactive from Feb 1st East wind event and maybe repeater slides in the Snowbasin periphery. We did not see any natural activity or red flags today.
Forecaster Comments - Good to tour with Kory Davis in his backyard and he seems very clued-in to the current snowpack situation in the Ogden area mountains. I agree with his assessment about the potential (albeit decreasing trend) from Monday's wind slabs from the north to east wind event; the presence but dormancy of the 2-3mm SH buried 40-60cm down; and the structural concerns of the rain crust around 7500' in elevation. Well below this, the crust seemed bullet-proof; well above this exceeded the rain/snow line. Full propagation noted in low density DFs just below this 2cm crust and above a more friable crust. Likely still needs a more significant loading event and we'll continue to monitor whether facets develop adjacent to this crust...though I suspect perhaps not to a significant degree. Still some uncertainty about repeaters in the Ogden area mountains from my perspective. Seemed overall Moderate danger today with lingering wind slabs, sluffing in the low density snow, and possible outlier repeaters (in isolated terrain).
On Feb 2nd 2016 I traveled around the North Side of Snowbasin Coldwater canyon and Hells canyon in search of burried surface hoar and I was not able to find any at any aspect or elevation. I did see lots of fresh wind loading in very strange places due to the East winds.