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Forecast for the Uintas Area Mountains

Craig Gordon
Issued by Craig Gordon on
Monday morning, February 24, 2020
On steep, mid and upper elevation, leeward slopes, you'll find hard, dense slabs reactive to our additional weight and pockets of MODERATE avalanche danger exist. Making up a small portion of the terrain available to ride today, human triggered avalanches are POSSIBLE, especially on slopes with an easterly component to its aspect. In addition... while more the exception than the rule, avalanches breaking into deeper, buried weak layers are still possible. Usual suspect terrain includes- steep, rocky, upper elevation terrain, especially slopes exhibiting a thin, shallow snowpack and this includes repeater avalanche paths. Remember- any slide that breaks to old snow, instantly throws a curve ball at your day.
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-
Clouds increased overnight, temperatures are in the teens and low 20's, and light snow is just starting to develop over the mountains. The bigger, and more disappointing news are the west-southwest winds which ramped up right around midnight and are they're smokin' in the 50's and 60's, gusting into the 80's along the high peaks. Recent winds blasted our high alpine terrain, but on a go-anywhere base, if you seek out mid elevation, wind sheltered slopes, and you'll be rewarded with shallow, creamy snow.
Uinta weather network info is found here. Simply click on the Western Uinta tab.
For today-
Expect a few scattered snow showers, but accumulations are gonna be nominal. Skies clear as the day progresses, temperatures crash into the single digits late today, and winds decrease.
Futurecast-
A cold, dry, northerly flow is on tap for the beginning of week.
You can clearly see what's going on along the high ridges. Above is a 24 hour data grab from Windy Peak (10,662').
Recent Avalanches
Occurring Saturday, but relevant none-the-less... avy pro, guide, and instructor extraordinaire Dave Kikkert was out looking at snow and triggered the piece of snow in the image above. Dave noted... "Most slopes are trending toward stability and low hazard. However, still able trigger avalanches up to about 2 feet deep in thin rocky repeater zones. Mostly pockety in nature, but deep enough to take you for a ride." Solid advice from a super savvy snow pro... yo :)
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, nuking winds and a little new snow whipped up hard, dense drifts which formed much lower down-slope than we usually expect to see. I don't think today's slabs are overly connected, but hard slabs are tricky because they allow you to get well out onto the slope before failing. In addition, they'll have enough volume to knock you off your feet once triggered. So, the ticket to riding safely today is simply look for and avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum. Most prevalent on the leeward side of mid and upper elevation ridges, you'll also find fresh drifts cross-loaded around terrain features like chutes and gullies.
Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
Another steep, east facing, repeater slide path came to life Saturday. This was the third slide breaking to weak snow last week and it's a good indicator that this avalanche dragon still exists and can react with a little provocation. And remember- tracks on the slope aren't a good barometer of snow stability.
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.
Additional Information
Andy found good riding in shallow, creamy pow yesterday on the south half of the range. A most excellent trip report is found here.
It's been a great winter and the coverage even at lower elevations is quite good. High fives to the crew laying down the old school eights near the mouth of Weber Canyon.
General Announcements
The information in this forecast expires in 24 hours, but will be updated by 7:00 AM Tuesday Feb. 25th.
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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