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Avalanche Information
Friday, April 29, 2005 4:30 pm
Good afternoon, this is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Six inches of 12 percent water content snow fell yesterday afternoon and night
above 9,000’ in the Cottonwood Canyons. This
added to the six inches of snow from Wednesday night, which had settled out and
was damp in most places. Even though
there is about a foot of new snow, trail breaking is easy and you stay on top
quite well. Temperatures cooled down to
around 20 on the ridge tops this morning and warmed up to 25 by mid day. There was enough sun today to turn the new
snow into mashed potatoes on most of the sun exposed slopes but I still found
nice, dry powder on the north facing slopes above 10,000’ today. If you’re getting out on Saturday, you should
get at it early because if the sun comes out, it can quickly finish everything
off.
Mountain Weather:
We are expecting just scattered, light snow showers later this evening, then
mostly cloudy with scattered showers for both Saturday and Sunday with snow
accumulations 2-4 inches each day. But
as usual in the spring, the sun should poke though the clouds at times. Ridge
top winds should blow 20 from the northwest tonight and on Saturday with ridgetop temperatures in the mid 20’s with the day time
high in the upper 30’s down at 8,000’. Sunday,
ridge top winds will be light and variable with ridge top temperatures in the
upper 20’s with the 8,000’ temperature near 40.
The extended forecast calls for continued cool, unsettled weather for the next
10 days or so. We should get a bit of a
bit of a break on Wednesday, then another storm for next weekend.
Avalanche
Information:
Most of the new snow seemed to be stuck in fairly well and the only avalanche
activity I could see today was some damp sluffs within
the new snow on steep, sun exposed slopes and there were also some pockets of
soft, wind slabs up high along the ridges. Both of these problems were fairly easy to
deal with since everything is so close to the surface. So, as usual, check
how the new snow is behaving by jumping on test slopes, doing slope cuts and
simply digging down with your hand.
Also, as always, you should avoid any steep slope with recent deposits
of wind drifted snow.
And most important, when the strong, spring sun shines on all this new snow, it
will almost certainly create some widespread damp to wet sluffs
on all the slopes approaching 40 degrees or steeper. Stay off of and out from underneath steep
slopes when starts beating down on them.
Since we are operating on a reduced staff and there’s not much information
coming in this time of year, we won’t issue any avalanche danger ratings.
Finally, remember that with the exception of Snowbird, all the ski resorts are
closed for the season and they are not doing any avalanche control. So you need to treat them like the
backcountry and follow the usual safe-travel ritual, like one-at-a-time, don’t
travel above other people and get out of the way at the bottom.
We will probably end our avalanche advisories for the season after this
weekend.
If you run across anything we should know about, 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.
We’ll update this forecast as
conditions warrant, and thanks for calling.