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

sunday march 25, 2007

The information in this advisory expires 24 hours after the date and time it’s issued, but will be updated Wednesday March 28, 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 Sunday, March 25, 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 clear overnight allowing for another solid snowpack refreeze, but with a mild southwest flow and high clouds on tap for later in the day we might not see the epic corn conditions last quite as late as yesterday. Currently it’s 27 degrees at both the ridgeline and trailhead elevations and a few historic cold spots such as Lily and Trial Lake are in the low 20’s.Winds are generally out of the west and northwest, blowing 15-20 mph. If melt-freeze crusts aren’t your bag, there are still patches of soft settled powder on upper elevation shady slopes.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

Just like yesterday, the ticket for today is to get on the snow early and follow the sun around as it warms the snow surface. East aspects will soften first followed by southeast, south, southwest and finally west. Yesterday’s cool and breezy weather kept the snow surface supportable at mid and upper elevations until late in the day, but on the return trip to the trailhead, lower elevation snow turned into bottomless mank. With a shallower overnight refreeze, today’s supportable conditions may not last as long especially down low. So a well timed exit will help alleviate both the possibility of triggering a wet avalanche late in the day or any frustrations of falling off or through a packed trail.    

As far as our snowpack is concerned, the cold temperatures are starting to lockup some of the damp mid-pack weaknesses we’ve been worried about, but yesterday while Ted was out he stumbled onto a large natural wet slab at the head of the Mill Creek drainage on the east side of the range. This slide was several feet deep, occurring on a steep east facing slope at about 11,000’ in elevation and probably avalanched Monday or Tuesday. An interesting note is this avalanche failed on weak shallow snow around rocks, much like a snowmobiler triggered avalanche in upper Weber Canyon during the same time frame. While the chances of triggering an avalanche which breaks into deeper layers of the snowpack are becoming more isolated, it is still possible especially if you’re getting into steep, radical rocky terrain with a weak shallow snowpack.

 

Bottom Line:

The avalanche danger is generally LOW this morning, increasing to MODERATE on all sun-exposed slopes steeper than about 35 degrees with daytime heating. A MODERATE avalanche danger means human triggered avalanche are possible.

With a good shot of snow headed our way for midweek, I’d expect a rising avalanche danger during the Tuesday/Wednesday timeframe.

 

Mountain Weather:

A weak weather disturbance will approach the region today producing a mild southwest flow and high clouds. Winds will switch to the southwest and blow in the 15-25 mph range, increasing late tonight to 40 mph along the ridges. Highs today at 8,000’ will be in the low 50’s and at 10,000’ near 40 degrees. Overnight lows hover right around freezing. A weak cold front will drop across northern Utah late tonight and Monday morning, leading to a chance of showers or a thunderstorm with very high snow levels. A strong southerly flow develops Monday night as a stronger Pacific system approaches and winds will be nuking along the ridges with gusts in the 80’s. It looks like a cold front sweeps through the area on Tuesday with rapidly lowering snow levels and bands of snow showers and thunderstorms. The flow will gradually turn westerly Tuesday night, then northwest on Wednesday when the coldest air arrives. Snow totals should be in the 10”-18” range. Dry, with a significant warming trend is slated for Thursday through Sunday.

 

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.

 

The Windy Peak weather station is 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 Wednesday March 28, 2007.

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

1-888-999-4019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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