Forecast: Salt Lake Area Mountains - Utah Avalanche Center

Forecast for the Salt Lake Area Mountains

Issued by Drew Hardesty on
Thursday morning, January 7, 2021

I suspect our luck will run out soon.

Avalanche conditions remain dangerous.

A CONSIDERABLE AVALANCHE DANGER exists on many steep slopes in the backcountry. You can trigger avalanches 1-2' deep and 200' wide on steep west to north to easterly facing slopes at the mid and upper elevations. Avalanches may be triggered on, adjacent to, or below steep slopes. A MODERATE danger exists for triggering a lingering wind drift at the upper elevations.

Two points to remember today:

IF you are leaving the ski area at an exit gate, you are most likely stepping into a CONSIDERABLE avalanche hazard.
IF you are skiing or riding alone, your margins of safety are razor thin. If you make a mistake, there is no one to bail you out.

The Good News: excellent riding conditions exist on low angle slopes on the north side of the compass.

Low

Moderate

Considerable

High

Extreme

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Weather and Snow

All I can say is Wow. Yes, I'm talking about the many close calls in the backcountry yesterday. More on this in a minute.

Skies are mostly clear ahead of a weak, dry cold front approaching from the west.

Mountain temps are in the low to mid 20s Winds picked up ahead of this weak weather feature and are blowing 15-20mph from the west along the upper ridgelines.

Scorching temps and direct sun severely damaged the solar aspects yesterday, but shady sheltered slopes continue to hold soft settled powder.

For today, we'll see partly cloudy skies, light northwest winds and mountain temperatures cooling to a more reasonable 25°F or so. (to be precise). A blue-collar storm system arrives late Friday into early Saturday that should bring another round of meager snow. We'll take it.

Recent Avalanches

I'm not sure, as guide John Mletchnig said yesterday, that the handwriting could be more on the wall.

After publishing yesterday's forecast, the avalanches and close calls continued without pause or interruption throughout the afternoon. Humor me for a moment as I pull the key point of an essay I pieced together a few years ago, Who Actually Assumes the Risk? When we make decisions in the mountains, we ought to pause for a moment to consider who else might be impacted if things go south: friends, family, the SAR teams who have signed on to put themselves at risk to pull people out of avalanche debris piles. Who else?

We heard about many more human triggered avalanches in the backcountry yesterday. Each of these was big enough...or in terrain big enough to kill a person.

Most of these stepped into the old faceted snow from November and were 1-2' deep and up to 150' wide. Aspects ranged from northwest to north to southeast at 9400' and above.

The "Highlights": (MORE photos and observations of avalanches can be found in the Menu bar above. Locations found HERE)

A lone skier was caught and carried in an avalanche in West Monitor Bowl yesterday in plain sight of the two avalanches triggered there the day before.
At least one skier's tracks were taken out on the Hanging Snowfield of Squaretop in the Canyons periphery of the Park City Ridgeline. Note that there is another avalanche on the "Wall of Voodoo" as depicted by the red arrow.

Type

Location

Likelihood

Size

Description

Someone recommended using more direct language.

Avalanche conditions are dangerous. You can get killed in an avalanche. Avoid steep terrain for now.

Many steep slopes are hanging in the balance, waiting for a trigger. Recent avalanches as well as collapsing and cracking are bullseye clues that conditions are hazardous to your health if entering steep terrain today.

There's little mystery here: recent storm snow and moderate to strong winds have built a slab that teeters unsteadily over very weak sugar snow and we have a classic upside down strong over weak, unstable snow structure.

This unstable snow structure exists on many west to north to southeast facing slopes at the mid and upper elevations.

As I see it, you have three options;

Avoid the terrain (aspects and elevations) that harbors this unstable snow structure.
Choose this terrain but stick to the low angle slopes with no overhead hazard.
Roll the dice and hope for the best. Conditions remain ripe for an avalanche accident today.

Type

Location

Likelihood

Size

Description

Skier and riders triggered a few wind slab avalanches yesterday in upper elevation southeast facing terrain. Some of these were warmed and cross-loaded drifts on the Emma Ridges above the town of Alta; another was a heavily cross-loaded area below a cliff/rocky area on southeast facing terrain of Wolverine Peak in the Alta periphery. This may have been triggered from skiers above who dribbled some wet snow over the cliffbands/rocky section. (pc: Alta patrol)

You can still trigger these wind drifts today. KNOW that if you trigger a wind drift in west to north to east facing terrain that this initial avalanche may step down into deeper layers in the snowpack, resulting in a much more dangerous avalanche.

Additional Information

A few years ago, I did an analysis of the avalanches in the state of Utah in the modern era. This is for the post-mining days. We're up to 122 fatalities since January 1940.

The last sentence in the study's introduction was this -

As with any papers looking at statistics, it might be tempting to look at these fatalities as just numbers. But at the end of the day, each incident is not a number at all. Each incident is a human being – a person with a family and a community, with dreams and aspirations whose life was taken from them by an avalanche.

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This information does not apply to developed ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally done. This forecast is from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This forecast describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

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