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Avalanche advisory
Saturday, February 26,
2005
Good morning, this is
Current Conditions:
The blustery southeast winds on Wednesday made lots of tricky wind slabs above
tree line and the strong spring sun has put a good sun crust on all the sun
exposed slopes but there’s still about 6 inches of fine, dry snow on wind and
sun sheltered slopes. There’s also a
little bit of corn snow on lower elevation south facing slopes. Ridge top
temperatures are moderately chilly around 15-20 degrees and they peak up
during the day into the lower 30’s.
Ridge top winds are 10 mph from the west.
Avalanche Conditions:
This past week many people have triggered avalanches and several of them had
very close calls. For a change, we didn’t
hear about much human-triggered activity from the backcountry yesterday—just one
6 inch deep, 100’ wide, intentionally-triggered slide in
Most of the avalanches that people have triggered these past few days have
been on steep slopes—around 40 degrees and they have recent deposits of wind
drifted snow and they are sliding on weak layers of faceted snow and surface
hoar formed in January and early February.
As a very experienced avalanche worker put it yesterday, “People are
jumping into the bold lines and some of the bold lines are pulling out.” People are finding plenty of safe slopes but
there are just enough booby traps around to make me, and most other avalanche professionals,
nervous. The smart strategy today is to
continue to pick more conservative lines and follow all your safe travel
protocol, like doing slope cuts, going one at a time and getting out of the
way at the bottom.
Bottom Line (
The avalanche danger is MODERATE on slopes
steeper than about 35 degrees, especially any slope with recent or old deposits
of wind drifted snow. This means that most
slopes are safe but there are localized places where you can still trigger an
avalanche. If you want LOW danger terrain, stay on slopes less than 35
degrees without recent deposits of wind drifted snow.
(http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm
for an explanation of avalanche danger ratings.)
Mountain Weather: (You can find the afternoon
Weather Update here.)
We’ll have a few high clouds today but otherwise nice weather. Ridge top temperatures will be around 20
degrees and rise to 30 degrees in the heat of the day with ridge top winds 10
mph from the west. Down at 8,000’ the
day time high will rise to 35 today and cool to 18 degrees tonight.
For the extended forecast, we will have a weak weather disturbance for Monday,
but otherwise the weather should stay pretty benign for the next week.
Yesterday, Wasatch
Powderbird Guides flew in
If you have any snow or avalanche
observations, call and leave a message at 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or
e-mailing us at uac@avalanche.org. Fax is 524-6301.
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.
Drew Hardesty will update this
advisory by 7:30 on Sunday morning.
Thanks for calling.
For an explanation of avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm