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, February 15, 2004 and it’s 7:30 a.m.

Current conditions:

Under clear skies, current 10,000’ temperatures are in the low teens, and winds are out of the northwest at speeds of 5-15 mph with gusts in the low 20’s at the most exposed ridgeline locations. The riding and turning conditions remain quite good especially on sheltered, mid elevation slopes that face the north half of the compass. On the south facing aspects the sun has created some challenging crusts that soften and become more manageable by about midday.

Avalanche Conditions:

Plenty of folks were getting after it yesterday, punching out bold lines without incident and I haven’t heard of any recent avalanche activity on our side of the range since Friday. However, two interesting avalanches occurred yesterday, one on a backcountry slope on the Park City side of the range and another in the Provo Mountains. On the Park City side, two very experienced avalanche professionals went to investigate a human triggered avalanche, which occurred on Friday. After partially descending the slope to an island of safety, both felt it was unsafe to look at the crown and decided to dig a snowpit in a safe area next to the slope that slid on Friday. After digging a hole and preparing it for snow stability tests, the slope they were standing on collapsed, resulting in a remotely triggered avalanche on an adjacent slope. This slide occurred on an east facing aspect, 34 degrees in steepness, at 9800’ in elevation. It was 18” deep, 200’ wide, and ran for about 600 vertical feet. Intuition and safe travel practices kept this party from becoming part of the avalanche.

In the Provo Mountains, a skier remotely triggered a slide from about 25’ away, on a steep, northeast facing aspect. This avalanche was about 18” deep, 75-100’ wide, and ran for about 1500’ vertically.

So what do these two avalanches have to do with the Uinta Mountains? Well, both areas have a snowpack very similar to ours, and the weak layer involved were the facets formed during the January dry spell. These two incidents help to exemplify just how tricky things are out there right now. The stability pattern remains quite complex with the common denominator being; where there is a dense slab on top of weak snow you could probably still trigger an avalanche today. This critical combination is not widespread, so you’ll need to carefully evaluate each slope on an individual basis today. Dig lots of quick hand pits and take the time to investigate the snowpack and see what you’re dealing with before committing to a slope.

In addition the surface snow has grown weak and steep shady slopes are sluffing easily, entraining quite a bit of snow as they descend the slope. Take care not to get tangled up with one of these and go for a fast body bruising ride over a cliff band, or worse yet, get buried deep in a terrain trap such as a gully.

Bottom Line:

The avalanche danger is MODERATE today, at and above timberline, especially on northwest through east facing slopes steeper than about 35 degrees. Human triggered avalanches are possible.

At low and mid elevations and in wind-protected terrain on slopes less steep than 35 degrees the avalanche danger is generally LOW.

Mountain Weather:

Another weak disturbance will move through the region late this afternoon, though most of the energy will remain north of us resulting in high clouds with a chance of a flurry or two. High temperatures at 8,000’ will be near 30 degrees and at 10,000’ in the upper teens. Overnight lows will be near 10 degrees. Winds will be out of the west at speeds of 15-25 mph along the ridges and should increase and turn northwesterly tonight. A warm front on Monday will usher in cloudy skies and high temperatures will be a few degrees warmer than today’s. Tuesday looks to be mostly cloudy and breezy and there could be a storm in our future rolling in mid-week. I’ll have a better handle on this for tomorrow’s forecast.

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.

I will issue a special holiday advisory by 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb.16, 2004.

Thanks for calling.