The Utah Avalanche Center in Logan and Renegade Sports are teaming up to offer a FREE Avalanche Beacon Training Clinic on Tuesday, February 23rd from 5-7pm at Renegade Sports in Nibley. The clinic is open to everyone who wants to learn how to properly use an avalanche rescue beacon. Bring a friend or your family or your scout troop! It is an open house so come when you can. Remember, it's FREE and what you learn may save your life or the life of someone you know. For more info call 755-7111 or 757-2794.

Overall there's a MODERATE (2) or elevated avalanche danger, and triggered avalanches are possible on many slopes in the backcountry around Logan.. Pockets with a CONSIDERABLE (3) danger remain on shady upper and mid-elevation slopes approaching or steeper than about 35 degrees. Dangerous avalanche conditions exist on these slopes, and triggered avalanches 1 to 3 feet deep are probable . In some areas, particularly in areas with shallow snow cover and where weak snow still plagues the basal layers of the snowpack, you still might trigger a very dangerous deep slab avalanche.

Careful snowpack evaluation, cautious route-finding and conservative decision-making are essential for safe backcountry travel today.

It looks like a thin rime-crust formed by low clouds on Wednesday is fairly widespread across the zone. Snow surface conditions can’t quite be described as powder anymore. Those of us from more coastal climates are all too familiar with thin zipper-crusts, but at least beautiful needles of hoar frost and numinous rime deposits decorate upper elevation trees. There's now 74" of total snow on the ground at the Tony Grove Snotel containing 69% of average water for the date. Its 11 degrees at the 9700' Campbell Scientific--Logan Peak weather station and the wind is currently out of the west-southwest, averaging less than 10 mph.

Yesterday was quite active in the Wasatch Range backcountry, with at least 8 more human triggered avalanches involving around a foot of recently accumulated snow failing on a weal layer made up of frost or surface hoar, which is widespread across the region.

Locally; numerous natural and easily or remote triggered avalanches were reported across the forecast zone in the last week..By far the vast majority of these avalanches involved the newest layer of snow picked up since a nice layer of surface hoar was covered and preserved by light snow on Wednesday 2-10-10. Monday, a close call occurred in Tab Hollow when a foot-deep soft slab avalanche broke 60 to 80 feet above a skier, who was able to self arrest on the bed surface, as the snow washed by. A couple more unintentionally triggered avalanches occurred in Providence Canyon in the last few days...

Here's an updated local backcountry avalanche list:

Winds are moderate out of the west-southwest this morning, and mountain temperatures should rise a bit and stay fairly constant in the lower twenties today. Light snowfall will resume in the mountains by this afternoon and continue through most of the weekend, but accumulations will be on the light side and winds should stay fairly moderate.

I will be issuing morning avalanche advisories for the Logan area on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

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Send us your avalanche and snow observations. You can also call me at 435-757-7578 or the SLC office at 800-662-4140, or email to uac@utahavalanchecenter.org

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The information in this advisory is from the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

I will update this forecast Saturday morning. Thanks for checking in....