In partnership with: The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center, Utah Department of Public Safety Division of Comprehensive Emergency Management, Salt Lake County, and Utah State Parks
Tuesday,
February 04, 2003
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Good Morning. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
By all accounts, including my
own, yesterday was by far the best day of the season,
if you were in the upper parts of the Cottonwood Canyons with 1-2 feet of light
powder and sunshine. Today will be yet
another great day to call in sick. No,
we won’t have any sunshine today, but we did get 5-9 more inches of very light
heavenly snow overnight and I’m expecting 4-8 more inches of snow today. Bring your thick long underwear, face mask and
warm mittens, because it’s mighty chilly with temperatures barely cracking 10
degrees in the heat of the day.
Avalanche Conditions:
The avalanche conditions are
a quite tricky. Every year we reach this
point where the deep snowpack areas are pretty solid while the thin snowpack
areas want to take you for a ride.
That’s exactly what happened yesterday a couple of skiers were finding
quite stable snow all day and when they descended a northeast facing slope
between West Bowl of Silver Fork to the Meadow Chutes, the second skier
triggered an avalanche and the lower skier had to grab a tree to keep from
being swept over cliffs. It was on a
northeast facing slope at 9,700’. It broke
a couple feet deep in faceted snow and 250-300 feet wide. After it went over the cliffs, it stepped
down to 3 ½ feet deep in wet depth hoar.
Also yesterday, there were three different explosive triggered slides in
the backcountry, one in Mary Ellen in American Fork and a couple more in McDonolds near the Canyons Resort. (see
more complete list on the web, which I will update later this morning
http://www.avalanche.org/%7Euac/Avalanche_List.htm). All of these slides
are either on slopes which have slid during the past month and remain shallow
or are in shallow, rocky areas near ridges. The bottom line is that, as always,
thin snow means weak snow, so be sure to be very diligent about poking and
digging in the snow as you travel. Look
for weak, sugary snow beneath the chocolate-brown crust created by the wind
storm three days ago.
I have photos posted on the
web of a skier-triggered avalanche, which fits this description two days ago on
a northeast facing portion of Reynolds Peak (photo1,
photo2,
photo3,
photo4,
check out the dirt layer!). A similar
skier triggered avalanche occurred two days ago in George’s Bowl in Cardiff
Fork.
Bottom Line (SLC,
There is a MODERATE danger of triggering an avalanche into deeper
weak layers on northeast, north and northwest facing slopes steeper than 35
degrees that are above 9,000’ or on any steep slope with recent wind drifts. This means that there are localized places
where you can trigger an avalanche.
There will also be some localized, loose sluffs within the new snow
today on steep slopes. If we get much
more snow than I’m expecting or if the wind comes up the danger will rise at least a no
Mountain Weather:
A cold, unstable air mass will
continue to push into the Wasa
General Information:
Wasa
We will teach a free
avalanche awareness talk for snowboarders at Milo Sport on Wednesday, February
12th at
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: