Wasatch
Cache National Forest
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Avalanche advisory
Monday,
November 12, 2002
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Good morning, this is Bruce
Tremper with the
We won’t have all our phone
lines hooked up for a couple more days, so you may find it easier to access
this advisory on the internet.
Current Conditions:
With clear skies overnight,
temperatures are in the mid teens with light ridgetop
winds from the west. Most upper
elevation areas in the
Avalanche Conditions:
Yesterday was the fourth very
scary day in a row. In the past few
days, by my count, there have been at least 12 unintentional human triggered
avalanches in the backcountry with at least four people caught and at least one
injury. Luckily there have been no
deaths. Yesterday, someone triggered a
large slide in Days Fork and when I very carefully tiptoed into Cardiff Fork
yesterday it looked like mountain goats triggered a couple more avalanches
there. Avalanche control at ski areas yesterday
continued to produce large avalanches 2-4 feet deep and 400 feet wide. As the snow slowly settles and stabilizes,
the avalanches are becoming harder to trigger, but the ones you do trigger are
larger and more dangerous, making them especially tricky. Even experienced ski patrollers were getting
surprised yesterday. Many of these
slides were breaking after several people had already crossed the slope and
sometimes even after triggering a shallower slide in new snow, someone triggered
the bed surface and it broke to the ground.
You don’t see that very often! Taking
rides in these early season avalanches are especially nasty because you bounce
off of rocks all the way down. In other
words, these kinds of avalanches are nothing to mess with.
The problem, of course, is
the very weak, sugary depth hoar that was on the ground in October. It existed mostly above 9,000’ on northwest
through northeast facing slopes but at very high elevations also exists on west
and east facing slopes. Therefore if you
want to get onto steeper slopes, do it on the south facing slopes where the new
snow sits directly on the rocks. Yes,
you will hit more rocks, but at least you have a hugely diminished chance of
dying or getting beat up in an avalanche.
Finally, today as the sun
hits the snow for the first time and temperatures warm this afternoon, there
may be a few wet or damp sluffs on steep south facing slopes.
Bottom Line:
The avalanches danger is
still CONSIDERABLE today on northeast, north
and northwest facing slopes, approaching 35 degrees or steeper, above about 9,000’. Considerable means dangerous human triggered
slides are likely. There’s a MODERATE danger on those
same slopes between 30 and 35 degrees. If you want LOW danger terrain, stay on slopes of 30 degrees or
less, and stay well out from underneath steep slopes.
Mountain Weather:
With a nice, clear morning,
this would be a great day to get out and see all the spectacular avalanches
from last weekend. Today, winds should
be light from the south with ridgetop temperatures
warming up from the lower teens to near freezing later today. On Wednesday expect cloudy skies with a few
light snow showers as a weak Pacific storm brushes past
General Information:
Tom Kimbrough and I will be teaching
a free avalanche awareness class tonight at
To report backcountry snow
and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or trigger an avalanche,
call (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140.
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.
Evelyn Lees will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: