TR: Mt. Aire and the Utah snowpack

**Particle** · 02-22-2007, 05:03 PM

Got out with Powstash this morning for our first dawn patrol of the season on Mt. Aire, which finally filled in 'just' enough for some turns. Last year we skied it from the summit on a bomber snowpack on Jan 13, for reference.

It's a beautiful place and it was good to get out and check out the snowpack up close while sticking to some nice mellow low-angle terrain; some of the bowls up top looked nice but were brushing that boundary of 32-34 degrees that neither of us felt safe with. Everything we skied was 95% in the 25 degree range, with rollovers maxing out at 30.

We dug a couple of pits and it's consistent with what others have said about the snowpack: about 4-5" of recrystalized pow that makes for great turning, then a 4" windslab with some rain crusts, then about 2 feet of sugar to the ground. Nasty.

I first dug a small pit with an isolated column and got a layer to fail easily with one elbow tap (after hand, wrist, etc.). Then powstash showed me a new technique he'd learned where you cut a block 3-4' wide and do the shear test on one end of it; if the entire thing fails, it gives you a better appreciation for the likelihood of an avy propogating. Pretty cool idea. This was roughly 7500' elevation, NE aspect, 30 degree slope.

Powstash isolating the column:

hand tap:

and a clean shear on the second elbow tap. propogated across the whole column. scary how fast and easily the thing went:

Closeup of the pit showing layers described above:

**Buster Highmen** · 02-22-2007, 05:06 PM

Caption contest:

**Particle** · 02-22-2007, 05:09 PM

Powstash got this slope to collapse a bit on the second lap up. First lap he tried to make it fail by hopping on it with a hip belay but didn't get it to budge:

The summit looked pretty but not worth hiking:

Very windy when we topped out on the sub-summit:

The turns were mellow but nice. Powstash:

Me:

Tracks:

**AKturnanburn** · 02-22-2007, 05:14 PM

**powstash** · 02-22-2007, 05:18 PM

Oh geeze, this is gonna get ugly

Buster!

**Buster Highmen** · 02-22-2007, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by powstash

Oh geeze, this is gonna get ugly

Buster!

Sorry, I couldn't resist....

**Trackhead** · 02-22-2007, 05:24 PM

Nice to see the "Tremper" test put to use. I saw his vid of that same test from the Silver Fork avy, the day after. Scary results that day as well, obviously.