Don't miss Snowbird's Avalanche Rescue Awareness Day today from 11 till 2 at Entry 4 in Little Cottonwood Canyon. You can see the top avalanche rescue dogs in the country, practice with your beacons, learn shoveling techniques and watch helicopter search demonstrations.

There is a MODERATE danger of triggering an old, hard wind slab on slopes of about 35 degrees or steeper with recent deposits of wind drifted snow, especially above about 9,000’. There is also a MODERATE danger of wet sluffs on steep, sunny slopes and on all low elevation slopes as the snow heats up with daytime warming.

Under clear skies, it is another stunning spring-like morning in the mountains. Temperatures are in the teens in the valley bottoms, warm into the twenties at the mid elevations, before cooling back into the teens along the high ridges. The southwesterly winds are light, generally less than 10 mph, with only the Ogden ridgeline and a few other exposed peaks blowing in the 15 to 20 mph range.

Turning, riding and snowshoeing conditions are excellent in the sparkling recrystallized snow and surface hoar on wind sheltered, shady slopes. The sunny south through west facing slopes have breakable crusts this morning, which will soften rapidly as the sun hits, and upper elevation ridge lines and open bowls have wind damage, with the hard wind hammered drifts especially widespread on northwesterly facing slopes.

There was only one reported slide from the backcountry yesterday - cornice kicking on Bountiful Peak triggered a wind slab, 1-3' deep by 150' wide on a ENE facing slope at 9,200'. Explosive work at the resorts in the Ogden, Park City and Salt Lake mountains released a variety of small to medium sized slides, both pencil hard wind slabs and new snow soft slabs.

The high pressure over the intermountain west will weaken slightly today ahead of a very minor weather disturbance. Increasing high thin clouds today, possibly becoming overcast late this afternoon. Temperatures will warm into the mid to upper 30s at 8,000’. The winds should become more northwesterly, increasing slightly this afternoon, gusting into the mid 30s along the exposed ridges. Mostly cloudy skies tonight, with a chance for a few snow flurries, though little accumulation is expected. Then warm and dry through mid week, with the next chance for snow around Friday.

Wasatch Powderbird Guides were in Mineral, Silver, Days, Cardiff and American Fork yesterday. Today, they will NOT BE SKIING IN THE TRI CANYON AREA, and banking for a future Monday as per their permit. They will be in American Fork and Cascade. Operations planning page is here.

Note: Backcountry.com published a nice article on sidecountry skiing.

The last of the Beaver Mountain Discount tickets have been reduced to $35, with all proceeds going to the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center. Click HERE for details.

The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center is hosting a Level 2 avalanche class in February which is now open for registration by going to the Black Diamond retail store. More information is HERE.

Tickets are now available for the annual Backcountry Awareness Dinner on February 13th, with registration through the Snowbird Renaissance Center.

Beacon training parks are up and running! There is one at Snowbasin, one on the Park City side at the top of Canyon’s gondola, one in Little Cottonwood near the Snowbird parking structure on the bypass road, and in Big Cottonwood a training park is at the west end of Solitude's lower parking lot.

If you want to get this avalanche advisory e-mailed to you daily click HERE.

For a text only version, the link is on the left side bar, near the top.

UDOT highway avalanche control work info can be found by calling (801) 975-4838. Our statewide toll free line is 1-888-999-4019 (early morning, option 8).

The UAC depends on contributions from users like you to support our work. To find out more about how you can support our efforts to continue providing the avalanche forecasting and education that you expect please visit our Friends page.

Your snow and avalanche observations help everyone in the backcountry community. Please let us know what you're seeing by leaving a message at (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email us at uac@utahavalanchecenter.org. (Fax 801-524-6301).

The information in this advisory is from the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur. This advisory does not apply to ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally conducted.

Brett will update this advisory by 7:30 tomorrow morning.