It's 33°F this morning at the 8400' Tony Grove Snotel, and there is 70 inches of total snow containing 80% of normal SWE. It's 24°F and north winds are currently blowing 17 mph and gusting to around 30 mph at the 9700' CSI Logan Peak weather station. We're expecting a chance of snow showers this morning, but mostly sunny skies will develop with high temperatures at 9000' around 38°F, and moderate north winds. Cool and unsettled weather will continue through the upcoming week.
We are finding stable snow conditions and generally Low avalanche danger in the backcountry, with an inch or two of soft recrystallized powder on a widespread smooth and pretty solid melt-freeze crust from last week's warm temperatures. Stability has improved significantly since February on slopes with deep deposits of drifted snow, even in areas where extensive natural deep slab avalanches occurred. However, areas with poor snow structure and dry weak sugary or faceted snow are still pretty common where the snowpack is thin, (around 3' deep or less), on windward and mid elevation slopes, slopes with grass and bushes showing, and in rocky, shallow terrain.
We found stable snow conditions and Low avalanche danger in Wood Camp Hollow on Friday (3-12-2021).
Paige found weak sugary snow, poor snow structure, and propagation in snow stability tests in shallower snow in the Beaver Mountain Backcountry yesterday.
A party of riders reports triggering a few shallow loose avalanches of dry snow or sluffs on steep slopes in the Northern Bear River Range on Friday. These were manageable, but they had to be aware and careful of the trees below.
Sluffs of fresh snow on a steep slope in the Northern Bear River Range. (Flygares, 3-12-2021)
-It's been two weeks since any human triggered or natural avalanches failing on our nasty widespread buried persistent weak layer occurred. See
Twitter Post-A very extensive natural avalanche cycle occurred in mid February, and evidence is still apparent across the zone including deep crown lines, large chunks and very long piles of avalanche debris.
