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.

“keeping you on top”

AVALANCHE ADVISORY

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather information. Today is Wednesday, April 25, 2007 and it’s 11:00 in the morning.

We are issuing advisories on an intermittent basis for the remainder of April.

Current Conditions:

After an unsettled week, we finally have clear, beautiful weather. Overnight lows were 25-30 degrees with a clear skies, which refroze the snow surface quite well. Daytime highs yesterday were 40 degrees in most areas with 45 degree temperatures around 8,000’. The snow surface is now a mixture of refrozen crusts on most slopes with the exception of some scraps of damp powder above 10,500’ on north facing slopes.

Avalanche Discussion:
On Sunday and Monday, several people were able to trigger shallow wind drifts on several different slopes. Most of these avalanches were 6 inches deep and 30-70 feet wide. Locations include: Figure 8 Hill near Brighton, Birthday Chutes in White Pine Canyon and Thunder Bowl in Bell’s Canyon. In two of these incidents, skiers were caught and carried but in once case, they grabbed a tree and in another case they self arrested on the bed surface. We have more details, as usual, on our avalanche list and on our photos page.

Most of the wind slabs have settled out by now and it looks like our main concern for the rest of the month will be wet sluffs and slabs, especially with a strong warm up for this weekend. I expect that most of the wet activity will be shallow—around 6 inches or so—and they will be mostly sluffs with occasional wet slabs. With mostly clear skies forecast for the next 10 days or so, we will return to the usual springtime ritual: get out early and get home early. Because the sun is so high in the sky this time of year, these wet avalanches will occur on most all aspects and elevations, even on the upper elevation north facing slopes. So as usual, you should get off of, and out from underneath, slopes steeper than about 35 degrees when they get soggy from sun or warmer temperatures.

Mountain Weather:

Ridge top temperatures will remain around freezing through Friday and ridge top winds should remain reasonable at around 10 mph. On Thursday we should get some clouds from a weak system going by on a westerly flow but we are not expecting much if any snow. Skies should clear after that.

The extended forecast calls for strong warming this weekend and beyond with ridge top temperatures getting up into the low to mid 40’s.

Announcements:
UDOT highway avalanche control work info can be found HERE or by calling (801) 975-4838.

Our statewide tollfree line is 1-888-999-4019 (early morning, option 8).

For our classic text advisory click HERE.

We appreciate all the great snowpack and avalanche observations we’ve been getting, so keep leaving us messages at (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email us at [email protected]. (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.

We will update this advisory on an intermittent basis for the rest of April and thanks for calling.