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 Saturday, March 12th, 2005 at 7:30 am. This bulletin is sponsored in part by Poison Spider, Moab’s finest bike shop, 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:

There will be another day of spring-like conditions on tap for today up in the La Sal Mountains. If you want to farm some corn, it appears that today will be the last day to harvest that condition before winter tries to make a come back to the region. Yesterday was a great day to go out and enjoy the alpine, and today will be just the same. Expect supportable hard wind slabs on West-North aspects up high, while Southerly aspects will be supportable sun-crusts. Yesterday, corn conditions started to ripen around 10:30-11:00, and the high temperature peaked at 3:00 p.m. at 47 degrees at the trailhead. There is still some wonderful consolidated powder on sheltered North aspects below tree-line, go up and dabble with all the conditions before this chance disappears for a while.

The road to the Geyser Pass Trailhead is muddy at the bottom and muddy at the top, 4WD is still recommended.

Current Conditions: (click location for latest data)

Geyser Pass Trailhead (9,600’): 42” at the SNOTEL, it is 30 degrees at the TH at 6:00 am.,

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

Gold Basin and South Mountain: 75”-85”” of settled snow on the ground.

Mountain Weather: (At 10,500’)

The ridge of high-pressure that has been dominating our weather pattern is slowly being pushed to the west by a cold front moving south from Canada. This will be setting up a Northwesterly jet stream. Hopefully the La Sals will get some precipitation in the first part of the work week.

Today: Mostly sunny. High near 45. Winds will be out of the west-northwest at 15 mph.
Tonight: 20% chance of snow past midnight. Partly cloudy. Low near 23. Blustery with the winds out of the NNW at 15-20 mph.

Sunday: 20% chance of snow. Partly cloudy, with a high near 30. Winds will be out of the North at 15 mph, gusting to 30.

Avalanche Conditions:

The lack of any new snow in the past two weeks is definitely helping the snow pack heal, although there could be some instabilities that you might want to know about. There have been reports in Colorado of a few avalanches that were triggered by skiers, most of which failed on buried weak layers; buried surface hoar and facets. These instabilities can still be lurking on protected North through East aspects. Where will they react? Probably on steep slopes greater than 35 degrees where there are trigger points. Trigger points include steep convex rollovers, below wind-loaded ridges, shallow rocky areas and trees. ON the other side of the compass, on those West and South aspects, we are now concerned with wet slab avalanches. It has been warm enough each day for the snow on these aspects to lose its cohesion. Each day, more water is able to percolate down into the snow pack, potentially creating a very good bed surface to slide on. Yesterday, wet point releases were observed on these aspects at and above treeline. On high elevation Southerly aspects, be weary of recently deposited wind slabs that are have been created due to moderate winds out of the North. The Bottom Line for today is a avalanche danger of LOW on South through West aspects that will rise to MODERATE when the sun starts to bake those aspects, primarily after noon. If the snow starts to get slushy and you start to punch through the snow, it is time to get off these aspects. On North through East aspects, the avalanche danger is LOW with pockets of MODERATE where buried weaknesses exist in combination with a steep pitch and trigger points.

Nordic and Skate Skiing:

Warm conditions and snowmobile traffic equals slippery Nordic conditions, although Skating conditions will be fast.