Snowboarder triggered, able to self arrest on bed surface after a short ride.

Avalanche advisory January 3, 2004

Avalanche Conditions:

The huge wind storm on the afternoon of New Year’s Day created widespread areas of sensitive wind slabs that cracked and moved easily under the weight of a person and also a number of attention-getting large natural avalanches especially in areas outside of the Salt Lake area mountains. So yesterday morning, all the avalanche workers in northern Utah went out loaded for bear and most were surprised how quickly the wind slabs had seized up and became very stubborn. Extensive avalanche control work produced only very localized, deeper, hard-slabs and a few sluffs and very soft slabs within the new snow. Only a few people ventured into the backcountry yesterday and one skier triggered a wind slab on a ski cut in the upper Porter Fork drainage of Mill Creek Canyon. It broke about a foot deep and 50 feet wide on a 38 degree east facing slope. Also, on New Year’s Day in the foothills above North Ogden, a snowboarder triggered a wind slab between six inches and 3 feet deep, 90 feet wide on a northwest facing slope at 5,700’ in elevation. For more details on avalanche activity, call 801-364-1591. Today the new snow will cover up the old wind slabs, making them difficult to see, so the best strategy is to just watch your slope angles. With the very light density new snow, you can have a lot of fun on slopes of less than 35 degrees. Give it another day before you start to venture into the more dangerous terrain.

If you’re headed outside of the Salt Lake area mountains, we think the avalanche danger is a notch higher on the scale because the snowpack there was relatively thin and weak before the big storms started on Christmas. In the Logan, Ogden, Uinta, Provo and Wasatch Plateau, all the new snow has nearly tripled the snow depth, whereas in the Salt Lake area mountains, the new snow has barely doubled the total snow depth.