Sledders! Please keep the road below the Geyser Pass Winter trailhead parking lot open. You can park below the sled hill but DON'T BLOCK THE ROAD! If incidents and inconsiderate behaviour continue below the sled hill the Forest Service may have to close this area to parking. The Forest Service has had a lot of complaints.

Variable conditions are being reported in SE Utah. There is some good powder skiing on sheltered East and North facing slopes. There is also some wind damage being reported out there. Good luck finding good snow and be careful in wind affected areas as there are some weak layers in the upper pack. MODERATE avalanche danger on mid and upper elevation shady side slopes, E-NE-NW and again MODERATE danger on upper elevation SE-S-W facing slopes. Winds from the north the last few days have been managing to move around what little snow is available for transport. Watch out for localized wind pockets up high and daytime heating on sunny sides.

It is a major mixed bag of conditions in SE Utah at the moment. We've dropped below 100% of our normal snowpack measured at the NRCS Snotel site, and coverage on the mountain at lower elevations and in wind affected areas seems to reflect that. Some areas have decent coverage while other have been stripped of their snowpack or just never received that much to begin with. The professionals call it "spatial variability" , meaning that there's a huge range of snow quality and snowpack strength over a given area. This term is frequently used to describe southwestern snowpack situations and it's appropriate now. The upside of this situation is that there ARE some nice snow conditions to be found out there. Good powder skiing is being found in the N. Woods still and in places in Gold Basin. Mid-elevation E and N facing slopes are your best bet. The meadows are not yet baked so good riding is out there for snowmachiners too. Time to think outside the box as far as powder goes. Hopefully we'll pick up more snow this weekend. We have bout 39 inches of snow at our Gold Basin study plot.

The roads to the Geyser Pass Trailhead and the Dark Canyon Trailhead are plowed and in great shape providing access for 2wd vehicles. The Geyser Pass road is getting slippery so keep the speed down.

LUNA volunteers groomed the entire nordic track Monday including the Upper Nordic Loops east of Geyser Pass, the Gold Basin Road and the Lower Nordic Loops. The track is firm, fast and in great shape. Good Job groomers!

Large R2D3 avalanche off the North face of Mt. Tukunkuvatz into Red Snow Cirque. Another R2D2 slide off the SE face of Tukno. Pretty impressive. These ran at some point midweek last week. Probably associated with South winds last Mon/Tues that topped out at over 60 MPH. I am surprised that we did not see more avalanches with over an inch of water and high winds falling on to a weak underlying snowpack.

La Sal Mountain Weather for 10,000 ft: High Pressure cont'd, maybe some snow this weekend.

Today: Sunny, with a high near 47. Calm wind. Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 26. Calm wind becoming east southeast around 5 mph. Thursday: Partly sunny, with a high near 46. South wind around 5 mph. Thursday Night: A 40 percent chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 26. South southeast wind between 10 and 15 mph. Friday: A 50 percent chance of snow. Cloudy, with a high near 28. Breezy, with a southwest wind between 20 and 25 mph. Friday Night: A 50 percent chance of snow. Cloudy and breezy, with a low around 15. Saturday: Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 27. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Saturday Night: Snow likely. Cloudy, with a low around 14. Sunday: Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 23. Sunday Night: A chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 12. Monday: A chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 29.