Guest post by Tom Diegel Backcountry skiing is time spent mostly – but fortunately not completely! – walking uphill. Daniel Kahnemannn, the grandfather of “heuristics” and Nobel laureate who probably has no idea how much he’s influenced avalanche safety, noted that walking generates just the right amount of blood flow to maximize thinking. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of “thinking” about the many habits people practice, or don’t, to keep themselves safe in the backcountry. Avalanche Level 1 and 2 classes teach you a lot about snowpack and terrain, but they …

Week in Review A series of weather systems on a southwest flow arrived over Friday through Sunday Feb 17/18/19 with storm totals of up to 24" in the Cottonwoods, 14" in the Park City mountains, 18" Ogden mountains, and 6" at the mid elevations in the Provo mountains. Storm densities were Cascade-like with water totals exceeding 2". Sunday was an especially active day with several skier-triggered avalanches reported from the backcountry. These slides included both storm snow as well as fresh wind slabs, and were running within the storm snow as well as a layer of …

Snowfall Friday and Saturday Feb 10/11 deposited 10-20" in the Salt Lake mountains with over 2" of water equivalent. Avalanche activity on Saturday included sensitive storm and wind slabs, as well as sluffing within the storm snow, with several human-triggered avalanches reported from the backcountry. Two notable natural avalanches in upper White Pine Canyon also occurred over the weekend. These were likely caused by natural cornice falls and triggered large storm slabs that failed on a layer of graupel down about 12-18". [Photos Hardesty/Pease] Fresh wind slabs …

This is meant to be a companion piece to an earlier essay #NothingBadHappened(photo credit: Mark White) 20/40 Hindsight All too often, we find ourselves unable to predict what will happen; yet after the fact we explain what did happen with a great deal of confidence. This “ability” to explain that which we cannot predict, even in the absence of additional information, represents an important, though subtle, flaw in our reasoning. It leads us to believe that there is a less uncertain world than there actually is, and that we are less bright than we …

Week in Review 4-6” of snowfall fell in the Cottonwoods and Park City mountains from Thursday Feb 2 through Saturday Feb 4, with some favored locations along the Park City ridgeline receiving upwards of 8”. Persistent winds also resulted in isolated human-triggered wind slabs releasing in upper elevations over the weekend. [Mark White photo] Monday marked the beginning of a period of warm and very windy conditions with heavy, wet snowfall and a rain/snow line reaching 8000'. Snow and water totals by Wednesday included: Salt Lake area mountains 6-8" snow …

Friday January 27 was a stunning bright and bluebird day, with several feet of fresh snow that had fallen the prior eight days. However, six human triggered avalanches were reported that day, primarily in the Park City mountains as well as Lambs Canyon and Summit Park in Parleys Canyon. These occurred in elevations ranging from 7600’ - 9400’ and on northwest through southeast aspects. The weak layers were either preserved surface hoar or near surface facets, buried down 2-3’ in thesnowpack. Trent produced anexcellent video recapof the avalanche that …

Week in Review by Greg Gagne Wow. A prolonged period of storms began late in the day on Friday Jan 20th, with an overachieving storm on Saturday the 21st with numerous human-triggered as well as natural avalanches occurring over the weekend. (Mark Staples described the activity of the weekend of Jan 21/22.) Strong winds and heavy snowfall led to an avalanche warning issued by the UAC on Monday and Tuesday January 23/24 for the mountains of northern Utah. Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed beginning on Monday morning due to dangerous avalanche activity, and did not …