Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center

US Forest Service Manti-La Sal National Forest

Introduction: Good morning! This is Max Forgensi with the USFS Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005 at 8:00 am. This bulletin is sponsored in part by Western Spirit, offering cycling adventures in Moab and beyond, proud sponsors of the Friends of the Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center. This advisory will expire in 24 hours.

To see past advisories check out the ARCHIVE. To see current conditions go to our WEATHER PAGE. To see photos go to the AVIPHOTOS page.

General Conditions:

Clear in the morning, cloudy at night. The La Sal Mountains are breathing a little bit after a barrage of snow in the last half of February. Warm temperatures and sunny skies are what is on tap for today. Hopefully, we will break out of this pattern, or we’ll have a dry March like last year! There are sun crusts on South through West aspects and you can still find some nice powder on protected North aspects. The road is in decent shape, the bottom half of the Geyser Pass road will be pretty muddy in the afternoon.

Current Conditions: (click location for latest data)

Geyser Pass Trailhead (9,600’): 51” at the SNOTEL, it is 14 degrees at the TH at 6:00 am.,

Pre-Laurel Peak (11,700’): still trying to fix it!

Gold Basin and South Mountain: 84” to 100” of settled snow on the ground.

Mountain Weather: (At 10,500’)

A short wave of moisture is coming in from the Northwest, although the increased moisture is associated with a weak warm advection. With low dew point values, this will make it so clouds will form with little or no precipitation, similar to what we have been seeing the past two days.

Today: Mostly sunny. High in the 40’s
Tonight: Partly cloudy changing to mostly cloudy skies by midnight. 20% chance of snow past midnight. Lows will be in the mid 20’s.

Thursday: Mostly cloudy with a chance of snow in the a.m., chance of rain in the p.m. High in the 40’s. Winds will be out of the west at 10-15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%.

Avalanche Conditions:

The lack of any significant winds and warm temperatures are starting to heal the snow pack, but don’t get fooled…there are some instabilities that you might want to be aware of, the most important being buried surface hoar. The past few storms came in fast without any wind and left clear skies in their wake. The cold, clear nights were perfect for surface hoar development. Then the cycle repeated itself. So now we have a bunch of new snow interlaced with buried surface hoar layers, that on Saturday, were reactive. The snow did not bring us to the natural avalanche breaking point but 2 slides were triggered intentionally that are indicative of what our avalanche danger is. The most significant slide was triggered on ‘Noriega’s Face’(photo1, photo2, photo3, photo4, photo5), a 35 degree north aspect at about 10,500’. The slide was triggered from 20 feet away on a low 20 degree slope on a ridgeline. It averaged about 18” deep and ran on the weak crust-facet interface about 250’ wide. The second slide triggered, was a small one in the Corkscrew Glades area (photo1, photo2), on a 36 degree north facing slope at about 11,000’. It entrained the top 4-6” of new snow which fell on a surface hoar layer formed the night before. This buried surface hoar layer can still be reactive to a ski cut or a skiers weight.

So the bottom line for today is an avalanche danger of MODERATE on open slopes steeper than 30 to 35 degrees at all elevations especially on NE-N-NW aspects, but you could see action on the open sunny slopes as well, harboring many weak crust-facet interfaces.

Nordic and Skate Skiing:

New snow, so go out and break trail.