The Utah Avalanche Center greatly values in longtime partnership with our world-class resorts and is blowing out the remaining donated lift tickets from Alta, Snowbird, Snowbasin, Sundance, and Nordic Valley with reduced prices. Every penny you spend and turn you make benefits the Utah Avalanche Center.
Check out our Garage Sale! Chock full of sweet backcountry gear - you can find the goods on our Facebook page here.
Should be a spectacular morning in the Uinta mountains, with sunrise temperatures in the high teens to low 20's. West-south-west winds have died down since yesterday and are blowing across the high peaks in the 15-20mph range with the occasional gust into the upper 20's. Mid and upper elevation, north facing terrain still offers soft settled powder.
Your very own avalanche forecaster Craig Gordon doing what he loves most - Very nice soft settled powder on sheltered shady slopes.
Uinta weather station network info is found here.
Trip reports and observations are found here.
Yesterday as the west winds ramped up, it created shallow wind slabs off the lee (opposite sides) of the mountain. We had reports that these were 6-10'' inches deep and 50-80' feet wide.
We also had a small 6"-24" slab avalanche, triggered yesterday on a steep, upper elevation, northerly facing slope, isn't exactly huge by Uinta standards, but it did break to old snow near the ground and is a "repeater". Several riders had already been on the slope before it released and it's a great example of the tricky nature of persistent slabs.
Less predictable is a persistent slab like this sled triggered avalanche in Gold Hill Basin, that Ted discovered from last weekend. Breaking 150' wide and failing on weak snow near the ground, check out Ted's great write-up and very informative video here.
Recent avalanche observations are found here
See or trigger an avalanche? Shooting cracks? Hear a collapse? It's simple. Go here to fill out an observation.