US Forest Service Manti-La Sal National Forest

Introduction: Good morning, this is Dave Medara with the USFS Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Saturday, April 8th at 8am. This advisory will expire in 24 hours.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW GROOMING EQUIPMENT HERE. Check out photos of a large avalanche in Dorry Canyon here.

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.

Please give us your observations from the field HERE. The more observations we get, the better this forecast can be.

General Conditions:

A beautiful day in SE Yesterday. Mighty warm with temperatures reaching 47 degrees at 9600 ft. Yesterday the name of the game was thick powder skiing and riding. Quite deep in some places. Today the powder skiing and riding will be limited to NE – NW facing slopes and all other aspects will be covered by an immature melt freeze crust. Too early into the melt-freeze cycles for corn skiing. Maybe Sunday or Monday if the High Pressure continues. Not much snow machine traffic yet so forget about skate skiing. The road to the Geyser Pass Trailhead is in great shape. The last two storms, which have brought us a total of 2.3” of water, have brought our snowpack totals up to 95% of normal for the season in the La Sals and 62% of normal in the Abajos.

Mountain Weather: (At 10,500’) –
Today: Mostly sunny, with a high around 50. Breezy, with a south southwest wind between 10 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.
Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 31. Southwest wind between 5 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.
Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high around 52. Breezy, with a south southwest wind between 10 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

Next chance for snow looks like mon/tues.

Weather Station/ Location	Snow Depth (HS): in./cm	New Snow (HN) in./cm	7:00 a.m. Temp (F)	Current Observations: Wind, 48 hour snow
Geyser Pass Trailhead (9,600’): (snotel link)	48”	1”	37.6	M. sunny, warm
Geyser Pass	83” est		N/a	Settled Powder
Gold Basin and South Mountain	71” /180cm	1”+	n/a
Pre-Laurel Peak Station (11,705’)	N/a	N/a	24	20-30 mph @ SSW

Avalanche Conditions: (Link to the International Avalanche Danger Scale here) –

The snow from the last 2 storms was enough to trigger some substantial avalanches at treeline and just above treeline elevations in the La Sals. That some of these broke through the strong bridge of snow from our big dump in early March and down to the February 15^th dirt layer was pretty sobering. A slide in the Lone Pine avalanche path in Gold Basin had a 4.5” crown and took out 2/3 of the snowpack with it. Scary. Check out the Lone Pine avalanche here. With the winds dying down and yesterday’s warming I would expect these instabilities to have settled out a bit, but you can never trust buried faceted crystals. We are currently calling the avalanche danger in the La Sal and Abajo Mountains MODERATE on steep NE-NW facing slopes. Moderate means that while natural avalanches are unlikely, human triggered avalanches are still possible. On E-S-W facing slopes expect the avalanche danger to start out LOW and progress to MODERATE as daytime heating progresses. Large Avalanches have been noted here in the La Sals and more recently in the San Juans with control work. Deep instabilities still exist in our snowpack. Likely trouble areas are steep north facing slopes, where the good skiing will be today. Heads up, and remember to get off sunny slopes in the afternoon. We’ll update this message Sunday morning.