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January 7, 2017 Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center Issues Avalanche Warning for Northern and Central Utah, Warns of Roof-Avalanches and Low Elevation Avalanche Danger. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Expected heavy snow and strong winds will create dangerous avalanche conditions over the next several days. Natural and human triggered slides will be certain on many steep slopes where the danger is expected to reach HIGH or EXTREME. Those without expert level avalanche skills should avoid being on or underneath steep slopes…or avoid the backcountry …

Insert Podcast here In this 2nd podcast for the Utah Avalanche Center, we interview Brett "Kowboy" Kobernik. We explore his background, forecasting style, and what makes the "mad scientist" of the UAC tick. Brett talks about his experience as a snowboard heli-ski guide in Alaska, as the inventor of the Voile split-board, and as a long time avalanche educator and backcountry ski guide. Kowboy started with the UAC in the Salt Lake City office in the winter of 2004/2005 and moved to Spring City, Utah in the …

I cribbed the name from an essay by Iain Stewart-Patterson, a mountain guide andfaculty staff member of Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. His dissertation:The Role of Intuition in the Decision Process of Canadian Ski Guides. You can find his essay in a recent issue of The Avalanche Review, the publication of the American Avalanche Association here(page 18). I imagine most of you reading this are familiar with the very close call in the Birthday Chutes from last Monday. I've added Mark White's photo below and the full accident investigation reportby Mark …

Below, you'll see the trends of the danger rose from Monday through Friday. An Avalanche Watch was issued Sunday afternoon. This evolved into a Special Avalanche Advisory by Monday morning along with a HIGH avalanche danger. Weather synopsis: A three-tiered storm arrived from the northwest last Saturday night, lasting through early Tuesday, more than doubling the amount of snow on the ground at that time. Winds have remained generally light to moderate out of the northwest and continued to veer to the northeast as the most recent storm moved through and dived south. …

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is implementing a revised policy for backcountry closures in Little Cottonwood Canyon this winter to help get SR 210 open quickly and safely, keep it open, and to reduce the likelihood of backcountry travelers exposed to avalanche explosives work. UDOT has thousands of people waiting on them to reduce the avalanche hazard and safely open the road and the sighting of a single person or even evidence of a personnear their artillery targets can delay opening for hours. For this reason, they will be enforcing a complete closure of …

When the first significant storm paints the peaks white and we're getting stoked for winter, it's time to start thinking about how that first layer will affect snowpack stability during the upcoming season. In a perfect world, it will keep right on dumping and we'll be ripping deep, stable snow by Christmas. But, as is often the case, we could see a return of high pressure, and then we'll be left with snowed in bike trails, cold crags, and a rotting foundation for our snowpack. When shallow snow sits on the ground under cold clear skies it begins to transform, or …

The avalanche danger was Low. After skiing the Woolly Hole beneath the north ridge of Timp and gliding over under the stepped couloirs that guard the upper Pika cirque, the skis went on the pack and up the right-most little cooler (Americans, including myself can never pronounce "couloir", especially with a good French accent). Halfway up, I start kicking into some hard wind slab. Small bits of hard wind slab cracked out as I ascended, and I noted that the hard shallow wind deposit was getting thicker and heavier as I went. I pawed down to find small …