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Forecast for the Uintas Area Mountains

Craig Gordon
Issued by Craig Gordon on
Friday morning, February 21, 2020
In a sea of LOW avalanche danger, lingering wind drifts on steep upper elevation, leeward slopes may react to our additional weight and a MODERATE avalanche danger exists. Human triggered avalanches are POSSIBLE in the wind zone, especially on slopes with an easterly component to its aspect. In addition- avalanches breaking into deeper, buried weak layers are becoming less likely over time, but are still possible. Usual suspect terrain includes- steep, rocky, upper elevation terrain, especially slopes exhibiting a thin, shallow snowpack. Remember- any slide that breaks to old snow, instantly throws a curve ball at your day.
Lose the wind and you lose much of the problem. Wind sheltered mid and low elevation terrain offers generally LOW avalanche danger.
Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Extreme
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Special Announcements
The UAC's Avy Awareness Auction is currently underway with tons of great gear, jewelry, artwork and experiences available. Visit the auction page here to help support the UAC's spring avalanche awareness and outreach efforts.
Click here for more details.
And... a new version of the UAC IOS application is now available on the Apple App Store. This version fixes many of the issues that occur when running IOS 13.
Click here for more details.
Weather and Snow
Currently-
High pressure camps out over the region delivering clear skies with temperatures registering in the mid teens. Right around midnight, southeast winds bumped into the 20's and 30's along the high ridges. On a go-anywhere base, the vast majority of our terrain offers excellent riding right now, especially mid elevation, wind sheltered slopes.
Uinta weather network info is found here. Simply click on the Western Uinta tab.
For today-
Look for sunny skies with highs climbing into the mid 30's. Southerly winds won't get out of hand, but may be a nuisance along the high peaks, blowing in the mid and upper 30's.
Futurecast-
The next best chance for a storm snow reset comes late in the weekend.
Recent Avalanches
Ted, Shaun, and Weston D were in the wind zone yesterday and report lots of wind damage in high alpine terrain and some minor cracking on wind drifted slopes, but no significant avalanche activity to speak of.
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
More the exception than the rule, lingering wind slabs like in the image above, still lurk on steep, wind drifted slopes. While not particularly widespread or energetic, you definitely don't wanna get caught off guard. So... before center-punching a big slope, gather some information by tweaking small test slopes similar in aspect, elevation, and slope angle to what you wanna ride. See how they're reacting and then make fact based decisions on your terrain choices. This strategy leads to a successful day of riding, high fives at the trailhead as well as when you roll home to your family this evening.
Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
Another steep, east facing, repeater slide path came to life Wednesday. This is the second slide breaking to weak snow this week and it's a good indicator that this avalanche dragon still exists and can react with a little provocation.
The good news is... where the snowpack is deep, it's happy in its own skin. However, snow is a curious medium and all we need to do is find one inconsistency or a shallow zone, maybe around a rock or bush, collapse the pack, and now we've got a bigger slide than we might've bargained for. So my safe travel strategy is to think about suspect terrain I want to continue avoiding and that includes steep, rocky terrain and slopes that avalanched near the ground earlier in the season.
General Announcements
The information in this forecast expires in 24 hours, but will be updated by 7:00 AM Saturday Feb. 22nd.
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
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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