Wasatch Cache National Forest
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partnership with:
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Avalanche advisory
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Good morning, this is Brett
Kobernik with the
Our partner, The Friends of the
Also the Friends
of the
Current Conditions:
Don’t
you love it when you have an experience that’s better then you
anticipated? That was the case with the
riding conditions I found yesterday. The
few traces of snow the mountains received over the last few days are keeping
conditions decent. Currently, skies are
clear with ridge top temperatures in the mid teens and ridge top wind speeds
are from the northeast in the 15 mph range gusting to the mid 20’s at higher
elevations.
Avalanche Conditions:
The weakest layer
currently is within the snow that we’ve received in the past week. One of our observers was able to trigger an
avalanche in a fresh wind slab on Tuesday in Hogum
Fork. It was 8-10” deep, 40-50’ wide and
ran farther then expected, around 1500 feet vertical. This was on a northwest aspect at around
10,400 feet and was intentionally triggered from a ski cut. Once it broke, an old bed surface from
January provided an excellent sliding plane for the snow to really get moving
and produce a good size dust cloud.
Current wind speeds along the ridges are enough to support snow
transport so you may find new sensitive fresh drifts today, as well as others
that formed a few days ago. Slope or ski cuts can be useful with
these. Also, keep in mind that there are a
number of firm crusts that will act as a good bed surface if you happen to
trigger one of these wind slabs.
A number of
observers from yesterday noted that the snow surface was sluffing quite easy on
steeper slopes and entraining good amounts of snow, enough to possibly knock
you over. Keep this in mind today as
well.
Most
southerly facing slopes have gone through a couple of melt freeze cycles which
will make it harder for the sun to loosen up the snow but you should still
watch for wet activity on the southerly aspects today. Keep an eye out for pinwheels and rollerballs as these are the first signs that the slope is
heating up. Loose snow point releases
usually follow. For a few more details
on the snowpack call 364-1591.
Bottom Line (
The avalanche
danger is LOW on most slopes today. There is a MODERATE
danger on any steep slope with recent deposits of wind drifted snow. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find a
sensitive wind slab in the higher terrain today. Keep in mind that you may see loose snow
sluffs on steep shady slopes. Watch the
southern aspects for wet activity as heating occurs today as well.
Mountain Weather:
High pressure will affect
the area until Friday. Today we’ll see
mostly clear skies with northeast winds at around 15 mph along the ridges. 8000’ temperatures will be in the upper 30’s
and 10,000’ temperatures in the upper 20’s.
The ridge of high pressure
will flatten out for the weekend with a disturbance on Saturday then a better
shot for snow on Sunday into Monday.
Don’t be shy about calling
or e-mailing us with any observations you have.
The more information we receive translates to better quality advisories. The phone number is
524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or e-mail us at uac@avalanche.org.
Yesterday Powderbird
Guides were not able to fly. Today they’ll
be in
Snowbird is hosting
the 2nd annual Backcountry Avalanche Awareness Week, now through February 7th, as a benefit for the
Brett Kobernik
will be giving a free avalanche awareness talk at the SLC Milosport
on Friday, February 11th, at 7pm.
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.
Bruce Tremper will update this advisory by 7:30 on
Thursday morning.
Thanks for calling
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm