Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center

US Forest Service Manti-La Sal National Forest

Introduction: Good morning! This is Evan Stevens with the USFS Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Friday, March 4th, 2005 at 7:30 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:

We are settling into a much more stable weather pattern then last week. Temperatures are starting to warm up, and the snow will be showing the effects. You can still find some fun, settled powder on northerly aspects, but south, southeast and southwest aspects have been hammered by the sun, with stout crusts in place-in little bit of time we may even see some corn. The road is 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’): 49” at the SNOTEL, it is 21 degrees at the TH at 6:00 am.,

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

Gold Basin and South Mountain: 80” to 95” of settled snow on the ground.

Mountain Weather: (At 10,500’)

Tomorrow’s brush with a weak disturbance will give us some clouds and some scattered snow showers. Otherwise look for it to be warm and sunny today.

Today: Partly cloudy, with a high around 38. Southwest wind around 5 mph becoming east.
Tonight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 14. East southeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.
Saturday: A 20 percent chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 35. East southeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Avalanche Conditions:

Although things look good on the surface, we still have a few buried persistent weak layers to take note of. These include 1-2 surface hoar layers buried intermittently in last weeks storms, and a weak crust/facet interface down about 1.5 feet from about 2 weeks ago. Although our stable and warm weather is healing these weaknesses, it is a good time to keep up your guard and be suspect of loaded looking slopes at and below treeline on steep (greater than 30-35 degrees) and open slopes on NE-N-NW aspects. The avalanche danger is MODERATE in these locations, which means human triggered avalanches are possible. We shouldn’t neglect the south facing slopes though, for two reasons. First is that the upper elevation sunny aspects are interlaced with varying crust layers, which are quite weak in between-watch out on steep (greater than 35 degrees) about abou 11,500’. As you get lower on the sunny aspects expect the warm temperatures to get the snow rolling in some wet slide activity as the day heats up. Both of these locations warrant a little bit of extra caution and have a MODERATE avalanche danger.

Nordic and Skate Skiing:

It’s great out there so get out and enjoy!