The friends of the Utah Avalanche Center in Logan is presenting a snowmobile avalanche safety clinic in Logan, with a classroom session on Thursday.January 17 and a field session up at Tony Grove on Saturday January 19. Save the date, call 435-757-2794 for more information, and visit our website to register..... HERE
The light new snow won't be enough to change the avalanche danger much in most areas, but wind slabs are starting to overload weak existing snow structure in drifted terrain that received more snow. The light powder improved riding conditions, but in most places you can still feel and hear Tuesday's rain/rime-crust, which is widespread across the region. The crust is quite variable in thickness and plagues slopes at all elevations.
The Tony Grove Snotel at 8400' reports 6 inches of new snow and 3/10ths of an inch of water in the past 24 hours. It's 3 degrees below zero this morning, there is 49 inches of total snow, and the station reports 73% of average water content for the date. The CSI Logan Peak weather station at 9700' reports 8 degrees below zero, and light west winds, with speeds averaging in the lower single digits...
No avalanches were reported locally, but my party triggered a couple small wind slabs on a drifted mid elevation slope as well as a few telling audible collapses. Resorts in the Ogden Valley ( with significantly more accumulation) report active soft slab conditions yesterday and a few naturals overnight. A party unintentionally triggered a good sized avalanche that broke through a rime crust on a mid elevation slope in the mountains above Salt lake City yesterday.
Here's a link to our avalanche list...
