Wasatch Cache National Forest
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 Salt Lake County.

AVALANCHE ADVISORY

Monday, February 13, 2006 7:30am
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Monday, February 13, 2006, and it’s about 7:30 am.

A long time fundraiser for the Utah Avalanche Center, the Banff Mountain Film Festival is coming back to town February 21^st and 22^nd at Kingsbury Hall. Tickets will be available at Kingsbury Hall, Art-Tix, the Outdoor Rec Program at the U and REI. For more info, call 581-8516.

Current Conditions:

The ridge will start to break down today, paving the way for a series of cold storms starting Tuesday night through at least the weekend. But for now, skies are mostly clear with mountain temperatures in the mid to upper teens. A system passing by to the northeast of us overnight is responsible for the bump in wind speeds, and we’ll continue to see speeds of 15-20mph out of the northwest, with higher averages along the most exposed ridgelines.

Avalanche Conditions:

No new avalanches were reported from the backcountry, except for a late ob from a skier who triggered a small hard slab in Mill B South on Saturday. It averaged 6-8” deep and about 30’ wide and in typical hard slab fashion, broke 10-20’ above him. Bruce Tremper and Bob Athey’s excellent investigations into the Box Elder accident can be found here and here (scroll down). Brett Kobernik’s insightful report on the accident off Little Superior can be found here.

Continue to be suspicious of hard wind slabs in drifted and cross-loaded areas and follow safe travel protocol. All four of the triggered hard slabs from Saturday were shallow and pockety, but resulted in four partial burials in Cardiff and a ride for over 2000’ on Box Elder.

Bottom Line:

The avalanche danger remains generally LOW today. Isolated pockets of stubborn, yet triggereable hard wind drifts exist in steep, exposed, upper elevation terrain. As the day heats up, it may be possible to trigger small wet sluffs on steep, sunny slopes.

Mountain Weather:

We’ll have mostly sunny skies with 8000’ highs in the mid-thirties. A series of cold storms will move into Utah by Tuesday night with unsettled weather expected through and beyond the weekend. We’ll have our mountain weather updated here by about noon.

Announcements:

Click here to check out our new online avalanche encyclopedia.

Early birds and snow geeks can catch our 6AM report at 364-1591.

Click HERE for a text only version of the avalanche advisory.

To have this advisory automatically e-mailed to you each day, click HERE.

UDOT also has a highway avalanche control work hotline for Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood, and Provo canyons, which is updated as needed. 801-975-4838.

Wasatch Powderbird Guides flew in AF, the Sessions, and Lamb’s yesterday and will hit AF, White Pine, Cascade, and the Sessions today. For more info, call 742-2800.

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.

Brett Kobernik will update this advisory by 7:30 Tuesday morning. Thanks for calling.