Support the UAC when you shop. Between now and Jan 11th, Whole Foods Market at Trolley Square, Sugarhouse & Cottonwood Heights will donate a dime per bag to Utah Avalanche Center when you shop there and donate your bag credit at check out.

See below or YouTube link to see a review of what's going on with our snowpack and our current avalanche concerns. YouTube link here. Special thanks to Steve Lloyd for this project.

Unopened ski area terrain has a backcountry snowpack, as avalanche mitigation work has not been done. Each resort has different uphill travel policies - please abide by signage and closures and check in with the local ski patrol.

Snowbird is closed to uphill traffic. Brighton has uphill policies in effect. Please check with their website or ski patrol for more info.

Skies are overcast. Mountain temps hover around freezing. At least the winds have picked up with this teaser moving by to the north. They're blowing 15-20mph, gusting to 30. They've yet to peak. 1-2' of snow sits on the ground in the upper elevations of the Cottonwoods and along the Park City ridgeline and riding conditions are fair on the north facing low angle grassy slopes.

No new avalanches were reported from the backcountry yesterday, but Greg Gagne found what looked to be a remotely triggered slide in the Catherine's area along the Alta periphery from Saturday. It failed two feet deep and 70' wide on a north facing slope just over 10,000' and running on old weak snow from October. Of note, the 70' width actually low-balls the magnitude of the avalanche as tensile cracks, or stress fractures spider-webbing beyond the flanks paint it more as 200' wide.

Other observers still experienced cracking and collapsing in the slumgullion stew of weaknesses within our beleaguered snowpack, as - aside from all the graupel layers - weak faceted layers exist from September, October, and early November. It's a snowpack only a mother could love.

Highlights from the weekend:

Two natural avalanches during Friday's storm and one explosive-triggered monster in Collins Gulch of upper Little Cottonwood Canyon on Saturday.

• East Castle in upper LCC - 10,800' northwest to northeast facing, 1-2' deep and a half-mile-wide. This naturally released toward the end of the storm Friday afternoon or early evening, failing at the new snow/old snow interface on weak faceted grains from the snow that fell the first week of November. Mark Staples and Trent Meisenheimer describe the avalanche in the video below (or YouTube). It should be noted that even though the avalanche ran Friday, they still noted many loud collapses while even accessing the avalanche for their investigation Saturday.
• Catherine's area in upper LCC - 10,000' northwest facing, 12-16" deep and 100' wide, also running naturally during the storm on Friday. Greg Gagne describes what he found here.
• Mt Baldy in upper LCC - 10,800 north-northeast facing, 1-2' deep and 1000' wide, triggered Saturday with explosives and failing at the new snow/old snow interface on weak faceted grains from the snow that fell the first week of November. Photos here.

We'll be under overcast skies with warm temps and gusty west to northwest winds to the tune of 25-35mph. Ridgetop temps push to the mid-40s by Thursday. Despite a few weak "storms" here and there, the longer range models look a bit bleak at the moment.

Remember your information can save lives. If you see anything we should know about, please help us out by submitting snow and avalanche conditions. You can also call us at 801-524-5304, email by clicking HERE, or include #utavy in your tweet or Instagram.

To get help in an emergency (to request a rescue) in the Wasatch, call 911. Be prepared to give your GPS coordinates or the run name. Dispatchers have a copy of the Wasatch Backcountry Ski map.

Backcountry Emergencies. It outlines your step-by-step method in the event of a winter backcountry incident.

If you trigger an avalanche in the backcountry, but no one is hurt and you do not need assistance, please notify the nearest ski area dispatch to avoid a needless response by rescue teams. Thanks.

• Salt Lake and Park City – Alta Central (801-742-2033), Canyons Resort/PCMR Dispatch (435-615-1911)
• Ogden - Snowbasin Resort Dispatch (801-620-1017), Powder Mountain Dispatch (801-745-3772 x 123)
• Provo - Sundance Dispatch (801-223-4150)

EMAIL ADVISORY If you would like to get the daily advisory by email you will need to subscribe here.

DAWN PATROL Hotline updated daily by 5-530am - 888-999-4019 option 8.

TWITTER Updates for your mobile phone - DETAILS

UDOT canyon closures: LINK TO UDOT, or on Twitter, follow @UDOTavy, @CanyonAlerts or @AltaCentral

Utah Avalanche Center mobile app - Get your advisory on your iPhone along with great navigation and rescue tools.

Powderbird Helicopter Skiing - Blog/itinerary for the day

Lost or Found something in the backcountry? - http://nolofo.com/

Ski Utah mobile snow updates

To those skinning uphill at resorts: it is critical to know the resort policy on uphill travel. You can see the uphill travel policy for each resort here.

Benefit the Utah Avalanche Center when you shop from Backcountry.com or REI: Click this link for Backcountry.com or this link to REI, shop, and they will donate a percent of your purchase price to the UAC. Both offer free shipping (with some conditions) so this costs you nothing!

Benefit the Utah Avalanche Center when you buy or sell on ebay - set the Utah Avalanche Center as a favorite non-profit in your ebay account here and click on ebay gives when you buy or sell. You can choose to have your seller fees donated to the UAC, which doesn't cost you a penny.

This information does not apply to developed ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally done. This advisory is from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.