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Avalanche advisory
Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 7:30 am
Good
morning, this is Andrew McLean with the
The Friends of the
Current Conditions:
After a stellar day of crystal clear weather and
cool temperatures yesterday, high clouds and single to negative digit temperatures
drifted into the northern
Avalanche Conditions:
While there is still potential for deep slab instabilities in wind loaded areas with shallow snowpacks, yesterday’s main activity was an unusual blend of both wet and dry point release sluffs. Today’s overcast weather and colder temperatures should cap off the wet sluff activity, but the dry powder sluffs will still be a concern. In steep upper elevation terrain, sluffs were easy to initiate with slope cuts and ran roughly half off their track length with knee deep debris piles. A touring party in Broad’s Fork witnessed a unique avalanche that started as a full-depth failure on the slick underlying bedrock surface, then triggered a major soft snow sluff. The crown line appears to be 1-2” deep and the slide ran over 300’ downhill. While avalanches like this are going to be exceptions to the generally stable snowpack, it is worth hedging your bets in the backcountry right now. Slope cuts will be effective at flushing out loose snow in starting zones and sluff management techniques, such as riding diagonal fall-lines or traveling behind the sluffing snow will keep you from being surprised from behind. Safe travel techniques, such as moving quickly through terrain traps and avoiding loading slopes with more than one person at a time should be practiced today.
Bottom
Line for the Wasatch Range, including the
On slopes less steep than about 35 degrees, the avalanche danger is LOW. On slopes steeper than about 35 degrees, the avalanche danger is moderate, with fast moving human triggered powder sluffs being possible.
Mountain Weather:
A weak system with cold air and a bit of moisture will be drifting across the area today and tonight. It will remain mostly cloudy with a trace of snow possible and temperatures getting down to minus 5 degrees at 8,000’. The winds will behave themselves with a moderate breeze blowing out of the north/northeasterly direction. Thursday will warm up a bit with sunny weather in anticipation of a mostly clear day on Friday with temperatures into the 30’s. The upcoming President’s day weekend will start out mostly partly cloudy then shift over to mostly clear with temperatures ranging from the mid teens to lower 30’s.
For specific digital forecasts for the
General Information:
The
Wasatch Powderbird Guides flew in Mineral,
Some
gear was lost Sunday morning on the Alta to
If you are getting into the backcountry, please give us a call and let us know what you’re seeing, especially if you trigger an avalanche. You can leave a message at 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140. Or you can e-mail an observation to uac@avalanche .org, or you can fax an observation 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.
I will be updating this advisory Thursday morning.
Thanks for calling.
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