Wasatch Cache and Uinta National Forests

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

Tri-City Performance, Polaris, the Utah Snowmobile Association, the National Weather Service, BRORA, and Backcountry Access.

  

 

 

avalanche advisory

wednesday march 7, 2007

The information in this advisory expires 24 hours after the date and time it’s issued, but will be updated Saturday March 10, 2007.

 

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 Wednesday, March 7, 2007 and it’s about 7:00 am. Regularly scheduled avalanche advisories for the western Uinta’s are available on Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and all holidays and are brought to you in partnership with Utah State Parks and Recreation.

This advisory covers the terrain from Daniels Summit, to Mirror Lake, to the North Slope of the western Uinta Mountains. That’s a lot of turf and I can’t be in all of these places at once. Your snow and avalanche observations are critical to this program and help to save other riders lives by getting accurate information out to the public. I’m interested in what you’re seeing especially if you see or trigger an avalanche. Please call 801-231-2170, or email at [email protected] and fill me in with all the details. Thanks to everyone for all the great avalanche info and pictures this week.

 

Current Conditions:

Skies remained mostly clear overnight and currently temperatures are in the mid 20’s. Winds are light and westerly, blowing 10-20 mph along the ridges. Most sun-exposed slopes have some form of breakable surface crust, but riding and turning conditions remain quite good on mid and upper elevation shady slopes.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

Yesterday, Dave and I went to take a look at a large human triggered avalanche which occurred on Saturday, just west of Tower Mountain in the southern half of the range. The rider was side-hilling a short, steep north facing slope when he triggered a hard slab avalanche that was about 100 yards wide averaging 4’ in depth, but nearly 9’ deep at its thickest point. The blocks of debris were the size of minivans and this snowmobiler is extremely lucky he wasn’t crushed by this monster. I appreciate the details emailed to me on this close call, thanks for sharing the information.

This wasn’t the only jaw dropping avalanche we looked at. As a matter of fact our sight seeing tour began just about a mile or two away from the Noblett’s Trailhead where we saw avalanche activity from last weeks storm events in unusually low elevation terrain. In addition, avalanches occurred in terrain I haven’t seen slide before, like many east facing slopes across canyon from the Duchesne Ridge and a few smaller human triggered slides nearby.

The snowpack is on the mend and I haven’t heard of any human triggered avalanches in our area since Saturday. Although this is usually a sign of improving stability, my gut feeling is we’re not out of the woods quite yet. While it may be harder to trigger a large avalanche the consequences remain devastatingly huge and the results… unsurvivable. It’s the Dirty Harry principal and you won’t know whether there’s a bullet in the chamber until you pull the trigger and it’s too late. The most likely place to trigger an avalanche today will be in upper elevation terrain, especially on steep rocky slopes with a weak shallow snowpack. With cooler temperatures on the way in the next day or two and a little bit of patience, you’ll be able to get onto the big slopes soon and not have to worry about bone crushing avalanches.

 

Bottom Line:

At mid and upper elevations, at and above tree-line the avalanche danger is generally MODERATE today on all slopes steeper than about 35 degrees and human triggered avalanches are possible. Be aware that within this terrain there are pockets of CONSIDERABLE avalanche danger especially on steep rocky upper elevation slopes and large, dangerous human triggered avalanches are probable.

 

Mountain Weather:

Today we can expect increasing high clouds as the first in a series of weak storm systems affects our weather through late Friday. It’ll be sunny and warm for most of the day with highs at 10,000’ in the mid 30’s and at 8,000’ near 43 degrees. Overnight lows under mostly cloudy skies dip into the upper 20’s and we might see an inch or two of snow overnight. Thursday and Friday should be mostly cloudy with scattered snow showers, though little accumulation. There’s a little better chance of snow as a stronger system slides through the region late Friday night into Saturday, then high pressure returns for the latter half of the weekend and into early next week.  

 

Announcements:

I completed a preliminary investigation on the avalanche accident that occurred on Saturday Feb.17th in Buck Basin and it can be found here. Also there have been a number of close calls and unintentionally human triggered avalanches across the state in the past few days and pictures with descriptions of the events can be found here.

 

We finally got the Windy Peak weather station up and running. Click here for current conditions.

 

I’d like to thank Jim Shea, The Canyons and Colleen Graham from the Friends of the UAC for all their hard work in making the Know Before You Go fundraiser such a success!

 

The first annual western Uinta fundraising ride was an amazing success with nearly 150 people showing up for the ride alone!

I want to thank the Jim Shea Family Foundation, Rocky Mountain Sledders, the Wasatch Snowmobile Association and the Utah Snowmobile Association for all their tireless work in putting the event together. Thanks again to Team Thunderstruck and the Boondockers crew for helping out and schooling even the most experienced riders. Also, we couldn’t have pulled it off if it weren’t for Chad Booth who did an incredible job as both master of ceremonies and auctioneer. Finally, it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of everyone who attended… you folks are awesome!  

 

I want to thank the crew at Tri-City Performance in Springville along with Polaris and the Utah Snowmobile Association for partnering with the avalanche center and stepping up to the plate by providing a new sled for this season!  Click here, to see the new ride!

 

We installed Beacon Basin at the Noblett’s Trailhead and it’s good to go. I want to thank Doug, Bill, Jared, Brad and Wally who

unselfishly took time out of their powder day to help out the riding community… you guys rock!

 

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!

 
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 7:00 am on Saturday March 10, 2007.

This advisory is also available by calling 1-800-648-7433 or

1-888-999-4019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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