Avalanche Advisory
Advisory: Skyline Area Mountains Issued by Brett Kobernik for Tuesday - January 10, 2017 - 6:58am
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The avalanche danger remains CONSIDERABLE today. Human triggered avalanches are likely on steep slopes. People without expert level avalanche skills should avoid travel in the backcountry today. The avalanche conditions will remain dangerous as the next pieces of the storm move through.
special announcement

HUNTINGTON CANYON IS CURRENTLY CLOSED DUE TO AVALANCHE DANGER. UDOT WILL BE CONDUCTING AVALANCHE REDUCTION WORK WITH EXPLOSIVES THIS MORNING AND THE CANYON IS EXPECTED TO OPEN AGAIN BETWEEN 9 AND 11AM.
current conditions

Rain once again fell up to 9200' in elevation Monday morning. Temperatures finally started to cool off in the afternoon and the rain changed to snow adding a few more inches. Current temperatures are in the low 20s. West southwest wind has been strong but is currently slowing a bit.

The current snowpack is complex with a layer of buried sugar snow (faceted snow) combined with surface hoar in places and a rime crust to boot. There was low density snow near the surface before this week's high density snow fell. We've had rain on snow up to at least 9500' and the winds have been cranking. All of this has produced every type of avalanche condition you can imagine.

To add insult to injury, the riding conditions were horrible on Monday. It's just not an ideal time to be in the high country. I would let some more snow fall and wait until this current series of storm systems passes to head up for recreation. The good news is, I am optimistically hopeful that in the long run we will return to stable avalanche conditions. That said, I'm not yet sure if things will be safe during the upcoming weekend which looks like will have nice weather and probably lots of people getting out. Keep checking these advisories for updates.

Check out the backcountry observation below for some more details of what things looked like on Monday.

Region Occurence Date Type/Location Name
Skyline 01/9/2017 Observation: GE Hill/Skyline Summit Darce Trotter / Steve Cote Details
recent activity

There were natural avalanches in Huntington Canyon on Monday which crossed the road making it impassable. They were probably a result of the rain on snow event but we won't know until after some more field work. I'll have more details on the recent avalanche activity later today and in tomorrow's advisory.
weather

We'll see a break in the action today with not much precipitation anticipated during the day. We'll see mostly cloudy skies with periods of light snow possible. West southwest wind will remain fairly breezy but perhaps not as strong as it's been. Temperatures will remain in the 20s. A couple more waves will move through possibly giving us more snow. One on mid day Wednesday and another Thursday into Friday.
general announcements

We will publish full detailed advisories Saturday and Sunday mornings by 7am. We will also be publishing basic avalanche danger ratings & info during the week.

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