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Forecast for the Salt Lake Area Mountains

Issued by Bruce Tremper for
Monday, December 15, 2014

There is a MODERATE danger of human triggered avalanches from old pre-storm wind slabs deposited on weak faceted snow. These are cleverly concealed by the new snow. You could find localized problems mainly above 9,500' on NW, N, NE and E facing slopes.

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Special Announcements

Join us for a Fireside Chat at Black Diamond, Tuesday, December 16th, at 7pm. Brett Kobernik will review this season's conditions, where we are now and what we have to look forward to. Details here.

Tour the Slotterhouse: On Tuesday, Dec 16, at 6 pm Andrew McLean will do a slide show at the Petzl HQ about a recent trip to the Wrangell - St. Ellias National Park and Preserve in AK to ski a spectacular collection of splitter couloirs and schlep around the world's most luxurious glacier camp, putting early British expeditions to shame. Details here.

Discount lift tickets are in and for sale - ski a day at the resorts and benefit the Utah Avalanche Center. Tickets for Alta, Brighton, Deer Valley, Solitude, and Snowbasin, Snowbird, and Sundance are in and more tickets are expected shortly.

Weather and Snow

It's about time. It finally looks like a winter wonderland in the mountains with 3" to as much as 14 inches in the upper Little Cottonwood Canyon. The latest snow is light as a feather and yesterday was topped off with very light stellar clumps gently falling without a whisper of wind. Riding conditions are very nice with Goldilocks snow on a supportable, firm base. In shallow areas that firm base is very firm rocks and less firm logs.

This morning, it's mighty chilly in the single digits but with hardly a breath of wind. Skies are mostly clear. Today should be a fabulous day to get out.

Recent Avalanches

We did not hear about any avalanches from the backcountry yesterday but there was some sluffing of new snow on steep slopes and one release into old snow with explosives at one of the Cottonwood Canyons resorts.

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Avalanche Problem #1
New Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description

The new snow just doesn't weigh enough to overload the weak faceted snow that was on the surface before the storm. But the strong wind from the south before the storm created some localized wind slabs that do weigh enough and I'm suspicious that some of these still linger in the upper elevation, wind exposed terrain especially on the shady aspects of NW, N, NE and E facing slopes. There's extra uncertainty involved because a new blanket of snow cleverly conceals them. But they're quite localized and hard to find. I looked for them up high in White Pine yesterday without success.

Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description

There's no fresh wind slabs today but I expect the south wind to start blowing again tonight and on Tuesday so heads up. It won't take much wind to create some very sensitive soft slabs out of all this feather-like new snow.

Additional Information

Today is a call-in-sick-for-work day with fresh, super-light new snow, mostly sunny skies and very little wind. Cold temperatures should preserve the snow quality with the exception of strong sun on sunny aspects. We may see a few high clouds later in the day from our next weak storm now on the California Coast.

Tonight, the ridge top winds should start to pick up and blow from the south and temperatures will rise into the mid 20's. Tuesday we should see another 4 inches of snow with ridge top winds 25, gusting to 45 from the south. We will have low clouds lingering on Wednesday.

For the extended forecast, we will have another disturbance for the weekend.

General Announcements

Remember your information can save lives. If you see anything we should know about, please participate in the creation of our own community avalanche advisory by submitting snow and avalanche conditions. You can also call us at 801-524-5304, email by clicking HERE, or include #utavy in your tweet or Instagram.

If you trigger an avalanche in the backcountry - especially if you are adjacent to a ski area – please call the following teams to alert them to the slide and whether anyone is missing or not. Rescue teams can be exposed to significant hazard when responding to avalanches, and do not want to do so when unneeded. Thanks.

Salt Lake and Park City – Alta Central (801-742-2033), Canyons Resort Dispatch (435-615-3322)

Snowbasin Resort Dispatch (801-620-1017), Powder Mountain Dispatch (801-745-3772 x 123).

Sundance Dispatch (801-223-4150)

EMAIL ADVISORY If you would like to get the daily advisory by email you will need to subscribe here.​

DAWN PATROL Hotline updated daily by 5-530am - 888-999-4019 option 8.

Twitter Updates for your mobile phone - DETAILS

UDOT canyon closures: LINK TO UDOT

Utah Avalanche Center mobile app - Get your advisory on your iPhone along with great navigation and rescue tools.

Wasatch Powderbird Guides Blog/Itinerary for the Day.

Lost or Found something in the backcountry? - http://nolofo.com/

Ski Utah mobile snow updates

Discount lift tickets are now available at Backcountry.com with more resorts to come soon. Thanks to Ski Utah and the Utah Resorts. All proceeds go towards paying for Utah Avalanche Center avalanche and mountain weather advisories.

To those skinning uphill at resorts: it is your responsibility to know the resort policy on uphill travel. You can see the uphill travel policy for each resort here. IMPORTANT: Before skinning or hiking at a resort under new snow conditions, check in with Ski Patrol. Resorts can restrict or cut off access if incompatible with control and grooming operations.

Benefit the Utah Avalanche Center when you shop from Backcountry.com or REI: Click this link for Backcountry.com or this link to REI, shop, and they will donate a percent of your purchase price to the UAC. Both offer free shipping (with some conditions) so this costs you nothing!

Benefit the Utah Avalanche Center when you buy or sell on ebay - set the Utah Avalanche Center as a favorite non-profit in your ebay account here and click on ebay gives when you buy or sell. You can choose to have your seller fees donated to the UAC, which doesn't cost you a penny.

This information does not apply to developed ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally done. This advisory is from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always exist.

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