In partnership with: Utah Division of State
Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department
of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and
AVALANCHE ADVISORY
Sunday,
January 29, 2006 7:30am
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with
the
Current Conditions:
Storm totals after yesterday morning’s
break are about 6-10” of 11-12% density snow.
The last few flakes are falling, but the storm is already out the back
door. The southwest winds played the
starring role, blowing 35-45mph before shifting to the northwest
overnight. Currently the winds are
averaging 20mph with the most exposed anemometers continuing to record hourly averages
in the 30-45mph range. They should back
off before midday. Temperatures are in
the mid-teens and we’ll have diminishing cloud cover over the course of the
day. Riding conditions have been
excellent and may be a bit trickier with the wind effect and upside down layer
cake.
Avalanche Conditions:
Fast running sluffs and pockety 12” deep soft slabs
along the ridgelines comprised the bulk of the activity and observations from
Saturday. The reported natural activity
of a relatively shallow soft slab on a very steep north facing chute at 11,000’
coincided with the bump in winds in the early afternoon. Two skiers had slabs break above them, both
slabs about a foot deep and up to 100’ wide.
These in upper elevation north facing terrain – one in Mill B North of
BCC, and the other with little detail on exact location in upper BCC. Both escaped without being caught. A skier in the Y couloir, a steep
north-facing chute in lower Little Cottonwood Canyon, was not so lucky. Overcome by a fast moving loose snow
avalanche, he rag-dolled down the last 300’ of the gulley, bouncing off the
walls and losing much of his gear. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured.
It’ll be a mixed bag of problems in the backcountry today. Red flags include the strong initial southwest
and then northwest winds, the heavier 6-10” on top of Friday’s low density
fluff, and a rash of weak faceted snow formed late in the week. The winds will have loaded many slopes off
the ridgelines and around sub-ridges and gulley sidewalls, forming both soft
and hard slabs. Slope cuts, hasty pits,
and test slopes will offer some clues with the new snow and wind slab problems,
but the hard drifts will be more stubborn and trickier to gauge. We may finally have enough of a load to
activate some of the weak layers formed during the day Thursday and
subsequently buried. Collapsing will
give some indication here as well, as will more dedicated snow-pit tests. These weak layers have been found on a
variety of aspects and elevations and seem patchy in the Cottonwoods and more
pronounced in the other outlying areas.
Avalanches failing on these layers may pull out above you or at a distance,
may trigger other slides. Insult to
injury here is that many of them are sitting on a perfect bed surface of old
wind and suncrusts. The bottom line before the bottom line is that
conditions will be quite varied and tricky today, and you’ll want to be on your
game.
Bottom Line:
Steep wind drifted slopes at the mid and upper elevations will have a CONSIDERABLE
danger today. Human triggered avalanches
will be probable with natural avalanches possible. You’ll want to evaluate each slope
independently due to a wide array of variable conditions. Steep non-wind affected slopes will have a MODERATE danger.
Mountain Weather:
A short-lived ridge of high pressure will build in for today and we’ll
see diminishing cloud cover throughout the day.
The strong northwest winds should lose some steam by late morning,
dropping to 20mph. Temperatures will be
in the low to upper teens at most mountain locations. The mountains will have about 24 hours to
catch its breath before the next storm moves through late Monday. An additional 1-2’ of snow in favored
locations is possible.
Click here for the National
Weather Service graphic Forecast.
Announcements:
Early birds and snow
geeks can catch our 6AM report at 364-1591.
You can find our mountain
weather forecast here
by about noon each day.
3rd Annual Backcountry
Awareness Week Monday Jan 30-Sunday February 5
Fundraising
Dinner February 3rd at 6pm with speakers Conrad Anker and Apa
Sherpa. For more info, call Snowbird at
933-2147. Visit www.backcountryawareness.com
for more details.
Check out our new graphical advisory format. You can update your bookmarks to this link:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/newadvisory/advisory.php
Click HERE for a text only
version of the avalanche advisory.
To
have this advisory automatically e-mailed to you each day, click HERE. (You must re-sign up this season even if you
were on the list last season.)
UDOT also has a highway avalanche control work
hotline for Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood, and
The
Wasatch Powderbird Guides flew in
Please
report any backcountry snow and avalanche conditions. Call (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, email [email protected] or fax 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 Monday morning. Thanks for calling.