Wasatch
Cache and Uinta National
Forests 
In partnership with:
Tri-City Performance, Polaris, the
Avalanche ADVISORY
sunDAY
NOVEMBER 26, 2006
The information in this advisory expires 24 hours after
the date and time it’s issued.
Good Morning! This is Craig
Gordon with the
This
advisory covers the terrain from Daniels Summit, to
Current Conditions:
Under partly cloudy skies, temperatures are a little inverted this morning. At 10,000’ it’s near 20 degrees and in the mid teens at the trailhead elevations. Southwesterly winds are blowing 10-20 mph along the ridges. The only thing that’s changed in the past few days is now it’s getting harder to find a partner to ride with. While there’s a few patches of soft settled powder, most of the old snow surface consists of crusts and rock hard old tracks that have the pliability and softness of curb and gutter. Yup…it’s that grim.
Avalanche Conditions:
Today the chances of triggering an avalanche are pretty slim unless you’re getting into steep, shady upper elevation terrain with a shallow weak underlying snowpack.
In the bigger scheme of things, a major winter storm is slated to slam into the region this week and our benign avalanche conditions are going to rapidly change as the wind blows and the new snow piles up. My broken record mantra about looking at the old snow surface before it gets buried and digging into the snow to see where the weaknesses exist apply again today. With the huge variability in snow depths, strengths and surface hardness it’s going to get tricky once the new snow starts stacking up. Remember- we’ve had a lean start to the season so far and this year’s snowpack is unlike last winter’s go-anywhere-conditions. In many places our current snowpack is weak and fragile and won’t take much additional weight before it avalanches. Should the storm pan out for early next week I’d expect the avalanche danger to rise accordingly.
Bottom Line:
On most slopes throughout the range the avalanche
danger is generally LOW.
However, on upper elevation steep shady slopes a MODERATE avalanche
danger exists, especially on slopes steeper than 35 degrees facing the north
half of the compass. A MODERATE
avalanche danger means human triggered avalanches are possible.
Mountain Weather:
A weak
ridge will prevail today giving us partly cloudy skies and mild temperatures.
Highs at 8,000’ will be in the mid 30’s and at 10,000’ in the upper 20’s. Winds
should remain southwesterly, in the 10-20 mph range with an occasional gust in
the 30’s along the high ridges. Some moisture will increase tonight ahead of
the storm and bring a chance of flurries and cooling temperatures towards
morning. A very cold storm moving southeast off the coast of British Columbia
will move into the Pacific northwest tonight and into the northern Great Basin
Monday. Increasing moisture combined with good dynamics moving out ahead of the
storm will cause snow to increase and become widespread Monday. Southwesterly
winds should average 20-30 mph with gusts in the 50’s and the associated cold
front with heavy snow will arrive Monday evening. This very cold storm system should
camp over the region into Wednesday and we’re looking at storm totals in the 1’-2’
range.
Announcements:
Free avalanche awareness classes are available. Give
me a call at 801-231-2170 or email [email protected]
and get one scheduled before the season gets too crazy!
Click here to reference past advisories this season. If any terms confuse you, take a look at our new avalanche encyclopedia.
For avalanche photos click here.
General
Information:
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’ll update this
advisory by
This advisory is
also available by calling 1-800-648-7433 or
1-888-999-4019.
.