HUNTINGTON CANYON IS CURRENTLY CLOSED DUE TO AVALANCHE DANGER. UDOT WILL BE CONDUCTING AVALANCHE REDUCTION WORK WITH EXPLOSIVES THIS MORNING AND THE CANYON IS EXPECTED TO OPEN AGAIN BETWEEN 9 AND 11AM.
Rain once again fell up to 9200' in elevation Monday morning. Temperatures finally started to cool off in the afternoon and the rain changed to snow adding a few more inches. Current temperatures are in the low 20s. West southwest wind has been strong but is currently slowing a bit.
The current snowpack is complex with a layer of buried sugar snow (faceted snow) combined with surface hoar in places and a rime crust to boot. There was low density snow near the surface before this week's high density snow fell. We've had rain on snow up to at least 9500' and the winds have been cranking. All of this has produced every type of avalanche condition you can imagine.
To add insult to injury, the riding conditions were horrible on Monday. It's just not an ideal time to be in the high country. I would let some more snow fall and wait until this current series of storm systems passes to head up for recreation. The good news is, I am optimistically hopeful that in the long run we will return to stable avalanche conditions. That said, I'm not yet sure if things will be safe during the upcoming weekend which looks like will have nice weather and probably lots of people getting out. Keep checking these advisories for updates.
Check out the backcountry observation below for some more details of what things looked like on Monday.
| Region |
Occurence Date |
Type/Location |
Name |
|
| Skyline |
01/9/2017 |
Observation: GE Hill/Skyline Summit |
Darce Trotter / Steve Cote |
Details |
There were natural avalanches in Huntington Canyon on Monday which crossed the road making it impassable. They were probably a result of the rain on snow event but we won't know until after some more field work. I'll have more details on the recent avalanche activity later today and in tomorrow's advisory.
