Today we went into terrain near Payson which is quite popular for snowmobiling. We stuck mainly to east and northeast facing slopes. We observed the above pocket as we started ascending. We originally thought it ran a few days previous as there was some snow on the bed surface. The wind was blowing from the north and was transporting snow.

As we got a little higher we tickled a wind drift and it cracked but didn’t run. We found a few more of these as we continued up the ridge we were walking on

We finally found one on a steep enough slope that it released. We were provoking these safely from the ridge by stomping on the edges of them. This gave us excellent information about the loading pattern. We quickly realized that these were regulated to just along the ridges and the main portions of the slopes were not getting loaded. Also, the ridge regularly gets stripped by the wind creating a weaker shallow snowpack for these drifts to fail on.

This pocket didn’t run very far. These were quite sensitive which lead us to believe the first pocket we observed that released naturally very well could have pulled out just before we arrived.

The overall snowpack averages around 3 feet deep. The mid portion of the pack is very strong. The weaker snow near the ground is not a huge concern except in areas where the overall depth is less then about 2 feet. Most slopes with any southerly component became damp. We noted some wet loose avalanching on steeper road cuts on our exit. These were south and southwest facing. We also noted one larger wet loose snow avalanche on Timpanogos which ran around 1000 feet. Pockets of a MODERATE danger was the correct rating for this area today. I think we experienced more drifting then most areas in the Wasatch today.