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Good Morning. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Temperatures were very warm
yesterday and remain so this morning.
Yesterday it got up to around 40 at 8,000’ and around freezing along the
ridge tops. Winds blew fairly hard
overnight around 20 from the west and as much as 43, gusting to 56 on the most
exposed ridges. Most of the sun-exposed
slopes have a thick sun crust, there’s hard, wind affected snow on most of the
upper elevation wind exposed areas. There’s
still some dense, soft, settled powder and faceted snow on the wind and sun sheltered
slopes. A lot of the popular slopes are
filled with tracks.
Avalanche Conditions:
These warm temperatures
continue to settle and stabilize the snowpack.
Most of the popular, steep, northerly facing slopes got tracked out over
the past three days without incident and we are finally starting to relax
around here and trying to settle our nerves, which have been thoroughly jangled
over the past month with the record number of human triggered avalanches. And no, to answer your question, I don’t
think we are quite ready to call it low danger yet. Most of us feel that there’s
still some slopes hanging in the balance that a person could trigger. Many of the steep slopes have slid during either
the mid December storm or the New Year Eve storm, which removed the weakest
part of the faceted snow. But there are
a number of other slopes that did not slide, especially slopes less than 38
degrees in steepness. I think there’s still a few booby traps lingering on slopes between about
35 and 38 degrees in places that don’t usually see much traffic, especially in
thinner snowpack areas. There may also
be a few slopes that slid a month ago and are now filled in again. Since everything is covered up by new and
wind blown snow, it’s almost impossible to see its avalanche history unless you
do a lot of shovel work. So if you’re
headed to the north through east facing slopes, you should continue to be
conservative in picking your slope steepness and use your full tool kit of safe
travel practices. Cross things one at a
time, always leave someone in a safe spot to do the rescue, practice slopes
cuts and use a belay rope in dicey places.
In addition, the strong winds
last night and over the past couple days have created some localized areas of
hard deposits. As always, you should be
very suspicious of steep slopes with recent deposits of wind deposited snow.
Bottom Line (SLC,
Today there is a MODERATE danger of
triggering a deep slab avalanche on slopes facing the north half of the
compass, plus east facing slopes, above about 8,500’ that are steeper than 35
degrees, which is about the steepness of a black diamond slope at a ski resort. Steep slopes with recent wind deposits also
have a MODERATE
avalanche danger. On south facing slopes
and slopes less than steep than 30 degrees, the avalanche danger is generally LOW.
Mountain Weather:
Tonight we have a
quick-hitting, cold front coming through, which looks like it will be mostly
huff-and-puff with not much fluff. We
should have strong ridge top winds later today from the south, swi
The extended forecast calls
for continued depressing weather. The
General Information:
Wasa
The Friends of the
To report backcountry snow
and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or trigger an avalanche,
call (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email to [email protected] or fax to
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.
Evelyn Lees will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: