Wasatch Cache and Uinta National Forests

In partnership with: Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center and Utah State Parks.

 

 

 Avalanche ADVISORY

 

Good morning. This is Craig Gordon with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory for the western Uinta Mountains. Today is Sunday, January 4, 2004 and it’s 7:30 a.m.

 

Current conditions:

Under partly cloudy skies temperatures bottomed out last night and currently it’s a toe numbing –5 degrees at 10,000’. To add insult to injury the winds are out of the northwest with hourly averages in the 20’s and gusts in the low 30’s along the ridges. We’ve received 3” of new snow in the past 24 hours, though recent winds have damaged a lot of the upper elevation terrain surrounding the region, forming a punchy slab on top of lighter density snow. This all adds up to machine burying, trail breaking nightmares. However, excellent riding and turning conditions can be found on wind-sheltered, mid elevation slopes.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

It’s been pretty exciting in terms of avalanche activity in the region over the past few days and with a little visibility yesterday it was obvious we’ve gone through a fairly widespread natural avalanche cycle. Many of the big peaks woke up and shrugged their shoulders resulting in a number of large, deep, tree snapping avalanches. I’d suspect that these avalanches ran during the New Years Day wind event.  One of the more impressive slides I saw was off of the north face of Murdock Mountain. This avalanche was about 4’ deep, 300’ wide, and ran close to 800’ vertically. In addition to plenty of natural avalanche activity, a snowcat working in the Thousand Peaks area was able to sympathetically release 3 deep pockets. These avalanches were running fast and far, overtaking traditional ‘safe zones’. As has been the case with most of the bigger avalanche activity we’ve seen this year, all of these slides were running on facets near the ground, on steep north, northeast, and east facing slopes, above about 10,000’ in elevation, in terrain that had a shallow, weak pre-existing snowpack.

While I think the natural avalanche activity is beginning to wane the fact of the matter is we’ve added a lot of weight in a short period of time to a relatively weak snowpack. It will take sometime for the pack to heal and adjust. Triggering a slide today in steep, upper elevation terrain could have devastating consequences. Once triggered these hard slab avalanches have the possibility of propagating long distances and stepping into weaker layers buried in the snowpack. This combination would produce a large and dangerous avalanche. 

I’d play it safe for the next couple of days and watch my slope angles and steer my skis towards mid and low elevation slopes where even the low angle terrain is fast and fun.

 

Bottom Line:

The avalanche danger is CONSIDERABLE today on all steep slopes at and above timberline, especially those with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. Human triggered avalanches are probable.

At mid elevations the avalanche danger is MODERATE today on all steep slopes with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. Human triggered avalanches are possible.

At low elevations and on slopes less than 30 degrees in steepness the avalanche danger is generally LOW.

 

Mountain Weather:

A very cold somewhat moist northwest flow will be over the region today. We can expect increasing clouds and light snow showers with 1”-3” of snow both today and again tonight. Temperatures will be quite cold with highs at 10,000’ near zero and at 8,000’ in the mid single digits. Overnight lows at 8,000’ will near –5 degrees. Winds will be relaxing and switching to the west later this morning at should remain in the 10-20 mph range for the remainder of the day. High pressure begins to build on Monday bringing in clearing skies and slightly warmer temperatures. A weak system should brush by the area Tuesday and Wednesday producing scattered snow showers.

 

General Information: 

We can always use snow and avalanche information and your snowpack and avalanche observations could help to save someone’s life! If you see or trigger an avalanche give us a call at 801-231-2170 or 1-800-662-4140.

Also, if you’d like to schedule a free avalanche awareness talk and/or field day give us a call at 801-524-5304.

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.

This advisory will be updated by 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004.

Thanks for calling.