Wasatch Cache and Uinta National Forests

In partnership with: Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center and Utah State Parks.

Avalanche advisory

sundAY december 25, 2005

This advisory expires 24 hours from the date and time posted, but will be updated by 7:30 am monday December 26, 2005.

Good morning and Merry Christmas! This is Craig Gordon with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory for the western Uinta Mountains. Today is Sunday, December 25, 2005 and it’s 7:00 a.m. Avalanche advisories for the western Uintas are available on Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and all holidays.

This advisory covers the terrain from Daniels Summit, to Mirror Lake, to the North Slope of the western Uinta Mountains. That’s a lot of turf and I can’t be in all of these places at once. Your snow and avalanche observations are critical to this program and help to save other riders lives by getting accurate information out to the public. I’m interested in what you’re seeing especially if you see or trigger an avalanche. Please call 1-800-662-4140, or 801-231-2170, or email to [email protected] and fill us in with all the details.

Announcements:

The Moffit Peak weather station is up and running. This site was made possible through generous donations
by BRORA, The Utah Snowmobile Association, and the National Weather Service. You can view data by clicking here.

For avalanche photos click here.

Current Conditions:

Temperatures remained rather mild overnight, but an inversion is starting to develop. For instance, near the trailheads at about 8,000’ it’s in the mid 20’s and at 11,000’, temperatures are hovering near freezing. Skies are mostly clear and winds are light and variable, blowing less than 15 mph along the ridges. No new snow has fallen since Thursday, but I found excellent riding and turning conditions yesterday on sheltered, shady slopes.

Avalanche Conditions:

The instabilities from Thursday’s storm and Friday’s wind event, settled out nicely and the snowpack is generally well behaved. Yesterday, I found pockets of shallow wind slab about 10” deep and these drifts were mostly confined to leeward terrain at the highest elevations. I was a little surprised though, to find the strong winds transported snow lower on the slope than I might have expected and developed wind drifts around terrain features like chutes and gullies. While there’s miles of terrain to ride today and not trigger an avalanche, if you’re getting into steep, radical, upper elevation terrain, pull some defensive riding techniques out of your quiver. In addition to well placed slope cuts, test small slopes similar to what you want to ride on and see how they’re reacting, rather than just center-punching your favorite line right off the bat. Today’s avalanches should be shallow and manageable, but like always think about the consequences and don’t ruin your holiday by coming home beat up and humbled.

Bottom Line:

The avalanche danger is generally LOW on most slopes today and human triggered avalanches are unlikely.

Above tree-line there are pockets of MODERATE avalanche danger, on slopes facing northwest through east, steeper than about 35 degrees and human triggered avalanches are possible.

Mountain Weather:

One more day of nice, spring-like weather is on tap, before a series of strengthening Pacific systems move into the area. Today we can expect partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures with highs at 8,000’ in the mid 40’s and at 10,000’ near 40 degrees. Overnight lows will be in the mid 20’s. Winds will be light and variable this morning, becoming southwesterly and increasing this afternoon. The first system to impact the area should weaken substantially, bringing clouds and strong winds on Monday. The next system, scheduled for Monday night looks a little more promising and should give a decent shot of snow, though it’s a quick hitter. High pressure builds briefly for Wednesday with a return to stormy weather Thursday. It looks like we’ll be unsettled through the first of the year. I’ll try to pin down some snow amounts on these storms for tomorrow’s advisory.

General Information:

If you haven’t taken one of our free snowmobile specific avalanche awareness classes, schedule one now before things get too crazy. Give me a call at 801-231-2170 and I’d be happy to tailor a talk for your group.

Also, once there’s enough snow, I’ll have the “Beacon Basin” training site up and running again this year at the Nobletts trailhead.

The information in this advisory is from the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

This advisory expires 24 hours from the date and time posted, but will be updated by 7:30 am on Monday December 26, 2005.

Thanks for calling!