Avalanche Advisory
Advisory: Uintas Area Mountains Issued by Craig Gordon for Sunday - December 15, 2013 - 5:32am
bottom line

While not widespread, in the wind zone, you'll find a MODERATE avalanche danger on steep, wind drifted slopes and human triggered avalanches are possible. Terrain to avoid is steep, rocky, north facing slopes, especially where solid feeling slabs overlay weak sugary snow near the ground. In terrain with these characteristics avalanches have the possibility to break wider and deeper than you might expect, leading to a nasty, season ending ride through stumps, rocks, and logs barely hidden under our shallow snowpack.

Wind sheltered mid and low elevation terrain offers LOW avalanche danger.
current conditions

High pressure entrenched over the region, is giving us clear skies, and temperatures in the low to mid 20's this morning. Around dinnertime yesterday, northwest winds bumped into the 40's and 50's along the highest ridges and they are still blowing 25-35 mph in upper elevation exposed terrain. Recent winds have damaged a lot of the open bowls throughout the range, but with a little effort you can still find soft settled powder on wind sheltered, shady slopes.

Click here for current winds, temperatures, and snowfall throughout the range.

Click here for trip reports and avalanche observations.
recent activity

Michael Janulaitus was stomping around on Currant Creek Peak Wednesday and was able to trigger this 2' deep by 100' wide slide that broke to weak snow near the ground. Click here for his great description.
Avalanche Problem 1
type aspect/elevation characteristics
LIKELIHOOD
LIKELY
UNLIKELY
SIZE
LARGE
SMALL
TREND
INCREASING DANGER
SAME
DECREASING DANGER
over the next 24 hours
description

While the snowpack continues to gain strength and human triggered avalanches become less likely over time, the snowpack structure remains questionable. Sure, in most of our terrain you can get after it with no worries, but where strong snow rests on top of weak sugary snow, you've got the right ingredients for an avalanche... all we need now is the trigger. Of course, the usual suspect terrain comes to mind- steep, rocky, upper elevation slopes, especially those that face the north half of the compass are going to harbor more dangerous conditions. Avoiding this terrain is the ticket and matching your terrain choices with the consequences of triggering a slide is key, particularly given the early season conditions and shallow snow cover.

Our intrepid colleague Ted Scroggin was in Gold Hill Basin yesterday and found this snow structure. Ted is an amazing asset to the Avalanche Center and our community. More on his travels can be found here.

Steep and rocky with a thin, fragile snowpack... this is exactly the type of terrain where you could trigger an avalanche this weekend.
Avalanche Problem 2
type aspect/elevation characteristics
LIKELIHOOD
LIKELY
UNLIKELY
SIZE
LARGE
SMALL
TREND
INCREASING DANGER
SAME
DECREASING DANGER
over the next 24 hours
description

Yesterday's gusty northwest winds, formed fresh wind slabs on upper elevation leeward terrain, facing the south half of the compass. Easy to detect by their fat, rounded appearance, you'll find the vast majority of these manageably breaking at or below your skis, board, or sled.
weather

A dry and mild northwest flow gives us sunny skies and temperatures warming into the low 30's, while northwest winds remain a nuisance, blowing into the 40's and 50's along the high peaks. Under clear skies, overnight lows dip into the teens and low 20's. Not much change in the weather pattern until Thursday when it looks like a weakening weather system will give us a small shot of snow. High pressure builds afterwards.
general announcements

Remember your information can save lives. If you see anything we should know about, please participate in the creation of our own community avalanche advisory by submitting snow and avalanche conditions.   You can call me directly at 801-231-2170, email [email protected], or email by clicking HERE

This is a great time of year to schedule a free avalanche awareness presentation for your group or club. You can contact me at 801-231-2170 or email [email protected]

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The information in this advisory is from the US Forest Service which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

I will update this advisory by 7:00 AM on Wednesday Dec. 18, 2013