Wasatc h
Cache National
Forest
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
The Utah Avalanche
Center Home page is: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/
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Avalanche advisory
Sunday,
January 02, 2005
Good morning, this is Drew
Hardesty with the
Current Conditions:
Add a trace to one to Friday
night’s 8 to 16” of new snow, running storm totals from Tuesday night to 3 to
5’ in the Cottonwoods, 2 to 4’ on the Park City side, and 3 to 4 feet in the
western Uinta mountains and 2 feet in the Provo, Ogden and Logan
mountains. The southwest winds picked up
again in the afternoon, and after shifting to the southeast overnight, are still
averaging 20-25 mph with gusts into the 40’s.
Temperatures are in the mid-teens at 10,000’. Snow surface conditions are stellar.
Avalanche Conditions:
There were numerous human
triggered avalanches across the range yesterday with multiple close calls and
one skier sustaining serious injuries.
This event was in an out of bounds area adjacent to the Snowbasin ski
area where three were caught and carried nearly 2000’. Each was able to extricate themselves out of
the debris and had to straggle out of the way as another ski party triggered an
even larger avalanche down upon them. Elsewhere,
in Silver Fork of Big Cottonwood, a party remotely triggered a slide 2-3’ deep
by 200’ wide, then intentionally triggered another 2’ by 200’ wide on their way
out. In the
It’s a quite complex and
tricky situation in the backcountry.
Before the storms, the snow surfaces were an array of hard sun and wind
crusts and faceted snow. Compounding the
complexity are the snow amounts and wind affect with the storms, as these varied
dramatically among drainages and with elevation. Many avalanches are being triggered at the
interface before Friday night’s new snow, many are going at the original new and
old snow interface from Tuesday, and some are even pulling
out into the November facets. Get the
picture? What is clear is that with this
variability, doing a snow pit in one place will tell you only about that one
spot and not about the snow 15 turns down the slope or 100 yards down the
ridgeline. My recommendation is that if
you just can’t wait to allow the instabilities to settle out for another day or
so, stick to slopes in the low 30 degree range and follow the strictest travel
protocol.
Bottom Line:
Today, the avalanche danger
is CONSIDERABLE
on slopes approaching 35 degrees and steeper, especially with recent drifts of
wind blown snow, which includes the mid-elevations. The danger is MODERATE
on slopes of about 30 to 35 degrees.
Mountain Weather:
We’ll have mostly cloudy
skies with a trace or so expected during the day. Winds will be 20mph from the southwest. 8000’ highs will be in the mid-twenties with
10,000’ temps hovering near twenty. It
looks like South and
The Wasatch Powderbird Guides
did not fly yesterday because of weather and if possible, will be in American
Fork and Snake Creek.
Registration for
the Friends of the
Free Beacon Rescue
Training Centers are now open at Snowbird and the Canyons. For more information go to
wasatchbackcountryrescue.org.
We do an early morning update
around 6am each day on the 364-1591 line.
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.
I will update this advisory by 7:30 on Monday
morning.
Thanks for calling
________________________________________________________________________
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: