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Forecast for the Uintas Area Mountains

Craig Gordon
Issued by Craig Gordon on
Tuesday morning, January 7, 2020
While not widespread and focused on upper elevations in the wind zone, sketchy avalanche conditions exist on steep, wind drifted slopes, especially those with an easterly component to its aspect. You'll find a CONSIDERABLE avalanche danger in terrain with these characteristics and human triggered avalanches are PROBABLE. Any avalanche triggered may break to weak snow near the ground, creating a larger avalanche that will quickly get out of hand.
More predictable and manageable in size, you'll find shallow drifts reactive to our additional weight in mid elevation terrain, where a MODERATE avalanche danger exists. Human triggered avalanches are POSSIBLE on steep, wind drifted leeward slopes.
Where to ride?
Wind sheltered, low and mid elevation terrain and big open meadows are the place to be where you'll find great riding and generally LOW avalanche danger. In terrain with these characteristics human triggered avalanches are unlikely.
Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Extreme
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Weather and Snow
Currently-
Skies are clear and temperatures in the mid teens and low 20's. West and southwest winds bumped into the 30's and 40's for a couple hours late last night, but subsided early this morning and currently blow in the mid 20's along the high peaks. No new snow fell in the past 24 hours, however, Sunday nights 5" of snow went a long way to soften hard, old snow surfaces. Recent winds damaged our big open bowls and high alpine terrain, though lose a little elevation, head to wind sheltered slopes and you'll be rewarded with soft, surfy snow. The range has excellent early season coverage with total snow depths averaging close to 4' of settled snow.
Uinta weather network info is found here. Simply click on the Western Uinta tab.
For today-
Expect a stunning day in the mountains with sunny skies, temperatures rising into the 30's, and west-southwest winds blowing in the upper 20's along the high peaks.
Futurecast-
A series of disturbances impact the Uinta's beginning Wednesday afternoon, delivering a quick shot of snow Thursday. Perhaps 3"-6" stack up by days end with a break on Friday and a stronger storm for the weekend.
Recent Avalanches
No significant avalanche activity to report from yesterday.
To view additional trip reports and recent avalanche activity, simply click here.
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Avalanche Problem #1
Wind Drifted Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
Overnight winds found enough loose snow to whip into a fresh round of sensitive wind slabs, reactive to our additional weight. While not particularly widespread, the problem is... last nights slabs will cover over wind drifts that formed Sunday night, making them hard to detect. Most prevalent on upper elevation leeward slopes, I wouldn't be too surprised to find a fresh drift or two cross-loaded onto terrain features like chutes and gullies or even lower down-slope than we usually expect to see. Of course, your best bet for avoidance is to simply steer clear of any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum. In addition, look for shooting cracks in the snow which is a sure sign of unstable conditions.
Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
A wild card added to the mix of avalanche problems now includes steep, upper elevation slopes, facing the south half of the compass, where strong snow rests on weak snow underneath a post Christmas suncrust. The slide above along the Duchesne Ridge reported Saturday paints a complicated snowpack stability picture.
After a rough start and a few speeds bumps along the way, it feels like the snowpack is in a state of equilibrium and happy in its own skin. The good new is... our pack is looking encouragingly solid, especially where it's deep and nearing 4' of total settled snow. The bad news.... no matter how you cut it, we've got persistent weaknesses on all aspects of the compass, particularly in upper elevation terrain. And the bottom line is... anything persistent in our pack is tricky, can take long periods of time to heal, and snowpit stability tests often suggest false "green light" conditions. So that means, you can ride some slopes and be good to go, while others just wait for us to roll along and knock the legs out from underneath. And here's the danger... once initiated, avalanches have a distinct possibility of breaking deeper and wider than you might expect.
Additional Information
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General Announcements
The information in this forecast expires in 24 hours, but will be updated by 7:00 AM Wednesday Jan. 8th.
This forecast is updated daily by 7:00 AM.
In the mean-time, if you see or trigger an avalanche or just wanna let me know what you're seeing you can reach me directly at 801-231-2170
It'll be a minute or two before we're riding, but while you're waiting....
This is a great time of year to schedule one of our free avy awareness presentations.
You can email me directly [email protected]
The information in this forecast is from the US Forest Service which is solely responsible for its content.
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