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Forecast for the Provo Area Mountains

Drew Hardesty
Issued by Drew Hardesty on
Thursday morning, December 13, 2012

A MODERATE danger plagues the mid and upper elevation north through east facing slopes today. Human triggered slides are possible in this terrain, and may be triggered at a distance. Collapsing is a great indicator of localized instability. Other tracks on the slope offer no assurance. I've heard MODERATE is the new LOW out there. I don't think so.

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Special Announcements

Discount lift tickets are in! Go to http://www.backcountry.com/utah-avalanche-center to get tickets from our partners at Alta, Beaver Mountain, Brighton, Canyons, Deer Valley, Park City, Powder Mountain, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, Sundance, and Wolf Mountain. All proceeds benefit the Utah Avalanche Center. A big thanks for our world class mountain resorts - we couldn't do it without your partnership.

Weather and Snow

I'm always amused when I bring my 10 year old son to one of my avalanche talks and after hearing a classic one-liner, he yells out - "You always tell that joke!" The crowd laughs even harder. He loves to ski, and if it weren't for the boiler-plate wind slab and etch-a-sketch sastrugi, we'd take our show on the road.

We have overcast skies and a touch of snow falling up high. Temps are in the mid to upper 20s. The winds - well - as the old timers in North Dakota tell it, if the wind ever stopped, all the cows would fall over. With a storm centered over California, southerly winds are blowing 20-25mph with gusts to 30.

Recent Avalanches

We heard of no avalanching in the backcountry. Snow safety teams in the Little Cottonwood mountain resorts were able to trigger some hard slab avalanches yesterday, with one stepping into old snow beneath the early December rain crusts. There was a vague report of a cornice-induced avalanche along the Brighton periphery. We'll have more info on this perhaps later this morning.

Bruce Tremper and Trent Meisenheimer went back up to McDonald Draw along the Park City ridgeline yesterday to look at Tuesday's remotely triggered slide there into the older faceted snow. Their sleuthing and detective work on this slide can be found here. Their take-home analysis of the snowpack in general, complete with video, can be found here. (All of this and more can be found under Detailed Info there along the menu at the top.)

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Avalanche Problem #1
New Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description

Positive feedback from explosive testing by resort avalanche teams as well as clear-cut snow investigations in the backcountry make it easy to continue to offer warnings about mid to upper elevation north through east facing terrain. As I said yesterday, hard slabs over weak faceted snow is an unmanageable proposition. Cornice drops are likely to offer "false-stable" results while ski and slope cuts will be dangerous at best. It's enough to choose other aspects or keep my slope angles down.

This ain't your Grandparent's Moderate danger. It's more like your crazy old uncle. Likelihood of triggering is diminishing due to both the increased stubbornness of the wind slabs as well as a bit of time for the snowpack to adjust. Still, we call them Persistent Slabs for a reason.

Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description

Hard and stubborn wind drifts dot the moonscape. Tricky, these hard slabs...and they're in more than just the classic loading/deceleration zones. They'll allow more than a couple tracks on them before release. And its common to ride well along the back of the whale before triggering the thing where it tapers down. Hollow sounds, collapses are red flags. Smooth rounded features are best avoided.

Additional Information

We'll have mostly cloudy to overcast skies and perhaps a trace to an inch of snow today. Temps will be in the mid to upper 20s. Winds will remain southwesterly in the 25-30mph range until tomorrow as the storm passes by to the south. Unsettled weather continues through the weekend and into next week where we'll see additional accumulations of snowfall.

General Announcements

Go to http://www.backcountry.com/utah-avalanche-center to get tickets from our partners at Ala, Beaver Mountain, Brighton, Canyons, Deer Valley, Park City, Powder Mountain, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, Sundance, and Wolf Mountain. All proceeds benefit the Utah Avalanche Center.

If you trigger an avalanche in the backcountry - especially if you are adjacent to a ski area – please call the following teams to alert them to the slide and whether anyone is missing or not. Rescue teams can be exposed to significant hazard when responding to avalanches, and do not want to do so when unneeded. Thanks.

Salt Lake and Park City – Alta Central (801-742-2033), Canyons Resort Dispatch (435-615-3322)

Ogden – Snowbasin Patrol Dispatch (801-620-1017)

Provo – Sundance Patrol Dispatch (801-223-4150)

Dawn Patrol Forecast Hotline, updated by 05:30: 888-999-4019 option 8.

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Daily observations are frequently posted by 10 pm each evening.

Subscribe to the daily avalanche advisory e-mail click HERE.

UDOT canyon closures UDOT at (801) 975-4838

Wasatch Powderbird Guides does daily updates about where they'll be operating on this blog http://powderbird.blogspot.com/ .

Remember your information can save lives. If you see anything we should know about, please participate in the creation of our own community avalanche advisory bysubmitting snow and avalanche conditions. You can also call us at 801-524-5304 or 800-662-4140, or email by clicking HERE

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This advisory is produced by the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. It describes only general avalanche conditions and local variations always exist. Specific terrain and route finding decisions should always be based on skills learned in a field-based avalanche class.

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