The friends of the Utah Avalanche Center in Logan is presenting a snowmobile avalanche safety clinic in Logan, with a classroom session on Thursday.January 17 and a field session up at Tony Grove on Saturday January 19. Save the date, call 435-757-2794 for more information, and visit our website to register..... HERE
Looks like more fresh snow down low and in the southern part of the zone, with Powder Mt. reporting a foot of new snow and only an inch at Beaver. Barely enough snow to cover the creme-brulee rime/rain-crust in the Central Bear River Range, but at least we'll get a bit of a break from the smog. The light new snow won't be enough to change the avalanche danger much, but riding conditions will be improved, especially in the southern Bear River Range.
The Tony Grove Snotel at 8400' reports 2 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours. It's 7 degrees this morning, there is 45 inches of total snow, and the station reports 72% of average water content for the date. The CSI Logan Peak weather station at 9700' reports 1 degree below zero, and west-northwest winds averaging in the lower teens..
A rider triggered a small avalanche (most likely of the loose wet variety) as he descended a steep slope on the north side of Providence Canyon on Wednesday afternoon.. He lost control of the sled and it flipped over a few times, ending up buried to the handlebars in a ravine. The uninjured rider was partially buried and managed to self extricate. His partner descended into the ravine to help. The steep gully they were in bottomed out into the cliffs above the Providence Canyon quarry, and the pair could not get their sleds up and out. They were trapped by the terrain and became exhausted after digging out the mostly buried sled and attempting their escape. Luckily they had cell phone reception and they called some friends to come help. After a long evening on the mountain, the posse managed to get the sleds out of the trap and they rode out of the canyon in the middle of the night .
We noticed evidence of a few natural loose wet avalanches from Wednesday (1-9) in lower Providence Canyon, and other than a few loose dry sluffs, no other avalanches were observed or reported locally in the new year...
Here's a link to our avalanche list...