Wasatch Cache and Uinta National Forests

In partnership with: Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center and Utah State Parks.

Avalanche ADVISORY

Good morning and happy Easter! 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, April 11, 2004 and it’s 7:30 a.m. This will be the last of our regularly scheduled avalanche advisories. Many thanks go out to everyone who helped support this advisory program and I wish a safe summer to all!

Current conditions:

Under clear skies, most mountaintop locations are reporting temperatures in the low 20’s. Winds are generally out of the east, blowing at speeds of 10-20 mph along the ridges. Yesterday’s ferocious winds severely worked much of the upper elevation terrain, scouring many slopes down to the old rock hard crusts. However, in wind-sheltered terrain you will still find soft settled powder and the riding and turning conditions remain quite good.

Avalanche Conditions:

As the mountains are rapidly losing their winter coats I guess all good things must come to an end. Unfortunately avalanche forecasting is no exception. While I probably won’t miss getting up at ridiculously early times of the morning to put these advisories together, I will miss all the great people I work with and all of those of you who help to make this a successful program. I’m not done yet and since we’ve still got some time left let’s talk about yesterdays storm.

Well, Saturdays long overdue blast of winter provided lots of year-end smiles to both backcountry enthusiasts and the snowpack alike. The pack is solidly welded in place this morning, but with strong sunshine and warm temperatures on tap for today, we’ll need to make the transition as well and think about wet avalanches today. Upper elevation terrain where the bulk of the new snow fell will probably be the most active once the sun starts beating down on it. So if you’re starting to see roller balls careening down the slope you’re on, it’s nature’s way of saying it’s time to move to a cooler aspect or get off the snow entirely. While today’s wet slides and sluffs will be relatively slow moving, remember that they can often stack up deep piles of debris. Picnicking under steep slopes or in terrain traps such as gullies should definitely be avoided, especially during the heat of the day.

Bottom Line:

The danger of wet avalanches is generally LOW this morning and will rise to MODERATE on all steep sun-exposed slopes with daytime heating. Human triggered avalanches will be possible as the snow surface heats up.

Mountain Weather:

High pressure is building and it’ll be a beautiful day with mostly sunny skies expected. Temperatures will be rebounding with highs at 10,000’ near freezing and at 8,000’ in the low 40’s. Overnight lows will be in the mid 20’s. Winds will be switching to the north and will remain in the 10-20 mph range along the ridges. For Monday, look for a strong warming trend to develop and by mid week highs will once again be in the low 50’s. By the end of the week winter may make a return as the computer models tell us there’s a good chance of snow.

General Information:

We can always use snow and avalanche information and your snowpack and avalanche observations could help to save someone’s life. If you see or trigger an avalanche give us a call at 801-231-2170 or 1-800-662-4140.

Also, if you’d like to schedule a free avalanche awareness talk and/or field day give us a call at 801-524-5304.

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 will update this advisory by 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Apr.12, 2004 with some general avalanche information and tips for the spring season.

Thanks for calling.