Wasatch Cache National Forest
In partnership with: Utah State Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and Salt Lake County.

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Avalanche advisory

Sunday, April 03, 2005
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory.  Today is Sunday, April 03, 2005, and its 7:30 in the morning.

Current Conditions:
Overnight lows point to a thin refreeze above about 9500’ and none at all below that. Clear skies and increasing southwest winds in the 20’s and 30’s certainly help with both convective and long wave radiational cooling, but the mid and low elevations will still be wet and gloppy this morning. There’s still a little heavy powder on the upper elevation north-facing slopes, but the demand for it seems non-existent. Powder-snobs need only wait another 24 hours for another storm, which should give us another 12-16” or so.

Avalanche Conditions:
The heating continued to punish the snowpack with more natural wet slabs pulling out, predominantly on mid and upper elevation southeast facing slopes. The most dramatic slide pulled out just about the entire southeast face of Mt. Raymond in mid-BCC. Others include a 2’x40’ pocket along the Cardiac Ridge at 10,600’, and two in Primrose Cirque in Provo 1-2’x150-200’ at about 9200’. All of these are suspected of running on last weekend’s crusts on slowly decomposing stellars or recrystallized snow that still hasn’t had time to stabilize. The activity occurred mid-morning as the increasing winds and cloud cover helped to contain much the drama for the afternoon.

For today, due to the temperatures, mid and lower elevation sun-exposed slopes will have a much narrower window of safe travel. I’d recommend being off of them by mid-morning, if they’re worth being on at all. The mid and low elevation northerly slopes will be saturated and loose and it’ll be worth watching how much snow you can push around. Glide avalanches on the steeper northeast facing slopes may be a problem as well. Truthfully, it’ll be difficult to gauge the avalanche conditions as it’ll be a battle between increasing clouds and stronger winds with the poor refreeze. Best to stay conservative on the saturated slopes today and wait for things to lock up with tomorrow morning’s cold front so we can deal with avalanche problems that are a little less sinister.

Bottom Line (Salt Lake and Park City, Ogden and Provo mountains):
This morning, there is a MODERATE danger on mid and upper elevation northerly slopes steeper than 35 degrees, especially with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. With the poor refreeze, the wet slab avalanche danger will again rise to CONSIDERABLE with daytime heating, particularly on the more protected steep sun-exposed slopes as well as on the lower elevation northerly slopes.

Danger Scale: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm

Mountain Weather: (You can find the afternoon Weather Update here.)
Partly cloudy skies will give way to increasing clouds ahead of tomorrow’s approaching storm. 8000’ highs will be in the low 50’s with 10,000’ highs around freezing. The 20-35mph southwesterly winds will only increase during the day. Tomorrow’s cold front will again drop ridgetop temps to the low teens with light to moderate northwesterly winds after frontal passage. Areas favored by a northwest flow should see a foot to a foot and a half by late Monday.

Yesterday, the Powderbird guides were in AF and are unlikely to get out today.

UDOT COTTONWOOD CANYONS HOTLINE FOR ROAD CLOSURE AND AVALANCHE CONTROL INFORMATION: 975-4838.

If you are getting out, we appreciate your snowpack and avalanche observations. Please call and leave a message at 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or e-mail us at [email protected]. Fax is 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.

Brett Kobernik will update this advisory by 7:30 on Monday morning.

Thanks for calling.