Support the Utah Avalanche Center just by buying groceries!
Do you buy groceries at City Market? When you register your Kroger rewards card with their Community Rewards program, they will donate to the Utah Avalanche Center whenever you make a purchase. It's easy, only takes a minute, and doesn't cost you anything. Details here.
Road Conditions: Grand County pushed through one lane up to the trailhead on Monday and the road is passable.
Backcountry 101 Avalanche Class
We will be offering a Backcountry 101 avalanche class on Feb 3, 4. This course will include a night classroom session and a day in the field. Cost is $125 with proceeds to benefit the Utah Avalanche Center Moab. For more information or to sign up go here.
Scattered flurries over the past 48 hours have dusted the mountains with just under 2" of new snow. Light NE winds overnight have increased to 15-20 mph along ridge tops this morning. Temperature at the Geyser Pass Trailhead is 10 degrees, and it's a frigid -3 on Pre Laurel Peak.
It's now been week since our biggest storm cycle of the year began, and we received about 40" of snow between last Thursday and Monday. On Monday, we saw very strong southwest winds gusting to 70 mph and I feared the worst. But in our travels to the south end of the range yesterday, we found that excellent settled powder conditions exist on all aspects out of the wind zone. Though the sun peeked out a bit, cold temperatures kept the snow dry on southerly aspects as well.
Wind, temperature and humidity on Pre Laurel Peak.(11,700')
Storm totals and temperature in Gold Basin.(10,000')
Snow totals, temperature and snow/water equivalent at the Geyser Pass Trailhead. (9600')
Excellent powder exists in sheltered terrain.
On Saturday, a party remotely triggered this avalanche on a north facing slope at 10,400'. The avalanche likely failed on buried near surface facets under the load of new storm snow, eventually stepping down to deeper faceted layers around rocks.
Photo courtesy of James "Jimbo" Collins who was out flying around.