SAVE THE DATES!
Saturday, December 6 - 18th Annual Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop (USAW). This session will be held in-person at the Wasatch Jr High School Auditorium. 3750 S 3100 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84109. Information and tickets are available here.
Avalanche Awareness Week!
The 7th Annual Avalanche Awareness is the first week of December! This week is jam-packed with events to get you ready for the season and a chance to connect with other backcountry users. We hope to see you out there!
The weekend brought primarily clear skies, light winds, and a strong temperature inversion in the valley that knocked the cloud deck down. No new precipitation has made its way into the Wasatch since mid-last week.
Cooler air drifts into northern Utah today as a weak, moisture-starved front brings spotty light mountain snow from early afternoon into the evening, with the central Wasatch most likely to see any minor accumulations, winds gradually picking up from the northwest, and snow chances dropping off almost completely after about midnight. We could see a trace amount of new snowfall.
Snow conditions remain pretty grim, but things are becoming a bit more heads-up following the last pulse of storms. The highest elevation, cold northerly slopes continue to be the only places holding any significant snow. Previously, this snow was spotty and disconnected, but following mid-week precipitation last week and cooler temperatures, observers are finding the snow still primarily isolated to cold northerly slopes, though now it's beginning to look a bit more connected and smooth. We're seeing 4-10" of better-connected snow along ridgelines outside the Central Cottonwoods, and up to 2' now along upper elevation ridgelines in the Central Cottonwoods.
This is the time of year when it becomes especially important to note what coverage exists. It's worth noting where the dirt is because it might be the safest place to ride once storms really start rolling for us. Slopes with old snow will be guilty until proven innocent.
Observer Derek Debruin climbed the South Ridge of Superior and checked the north side snow, finding mostly thin 30-50cm coverage with pockets up to 60cm, widespread surface hoar, a shallow stack of storm snow over a thin crust and loose facets, and a handful of rockfall incidents on the south face.
See the snowpack structure Derek found below, and the coverage in upper Mill B South, below Superior and Monte Cristo.
As coverage improves, more people are getting out, and we’ve started receiving our first avalanche observations of the season.
Between 11/21 and 11/22, two avalanches occurred on Sunset Peak in Big Cottonwood Canyon—both likely shallow avalanches made up of primarily faceted snow (facet-lanches). A snowboarder triggered a 6-inch avalanche, 5 feet wide, at 10,300' on a north-facing slope, while another snowboarder triggered a 6-inch dry loose avalanche, 10 feet wide, at 10,000' on a north aspect under similar conditions.
More notable activity occurred on the 22nd in Red Pine Canyon, Little Cottonwood, where a soft slab avalanche of wind-drifted snow over facets released at 10,400' on a 37° northeast aspect. The avalanche ran 12 inches deep, 60 feet wide, and 100 feet long. The trigger is unknown but was likely natural, animal, or human-induced in this very shallow zone.
Photo of Red Pine avalanche - 12" deep and 60' wide on NE Aspect at 10,400'
Find all recent observations HERE.
