Introduction: Good
morning! This is Max Forgensi with
the USFS Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather
advisory. Today is Wednesday, March
2nd, 2005 at 8:00 am. This
bulletin is sponsored in part by Western
Spirit, offering cycling adventures in Moab and beyond, proud sponsors of
the Friends of the Manti-La Sal Avalanche Center. This advisory will expire in 24 hours.
To see past advisories check out the ARCHIVE. To see current conditions go to our WEATHER PAGE. To see photos go to the AVIPHOTOS page.
General Conditions:
Clear in the morning, cloudy at night. The La Sal Mountains are breathing a little bit after a
barrage of snow in the last half of February. Warm temperatures and sunny skies are what is on tap for
today. Hopefully, we will break
out of this pattern, or we’ll have a dry March like last year! There are sun crusts on South through
West aspects and you can still find some nice powder on protected North
aspects. The road is in decent
shape, the bottom half of the Geyser Pass road will be pretty muddy in the
afternoon.
Current Conditions: (click location for latest data)
Geyser
Pass Trailhead (9,600’): 51”
at the SNOTEL, it is 14 degrees at the TH at 6:00 am.,
Pre-Laurel
Peak (11,700’): still trying to fix it!
Gold Basin and South Mountain:
84” to 100” of settled snow on the ground.
Mountain Weather: (At 10,500’)
A
short wave of moisture is coming in from the Northwest, although the increased
moisture is associated with a weak warm advection. With low dew point values, this will make it so clouds will
form with little or no precipitation, similar to what we have been seeing the
past two days.
Today:
Mostly sunny. High in the 40’s
Tonight: Partly cloudy changing to mostly cloudy skies by midnight. 20% chance of snow past midnight. Lows will be in the mid 20’s.
Thursday:
Mostly cloudy with a
chance of snow in the a.m., chance of rain in the p.m. High in the 40’s. Winds will be out of the west at 10-15
mph. Chance of precipitation is
50%.
Avalanche Conditions:
The
lack of any significant winds and warm temperatures are starting to heal the
snow pack, but don’t get fooled…there are some instabilities that you might
want to be aware of, the most important being buried surface hoar. The past few storms came in fast
without any wind and left clear skies in their wake. The cold, clear nights were perfect for surface hoar development. Then the cycle repeated itself. So now we have a bunch of new snow
interlaced with buried surface hoar layers, that on Saturday, were reactive. The snow did not bring us to the
natural avalanche breaking point but 2 slides were triggered intentionally that
are indicative of what our avalanche danger is. The most significant slide was triggered on ‘Noriega’s
Face’(photo1,
photo2,
photo3,
photo4,
photo5),
a 35 degree north aspect at about 10,500’. The slide was triggered from 20 feet away on a low 20 degree
slope on a ridgeline. It averaged
about 18” deep and ran on the weak crust-facet interface about 250’ wide. The second slide triggered, was a small
one in the Corkscrew Glades area (photo1,
photo2),
on a 36 degree north facing slope at about 11,000’. It entrained the top 4-6” of new snow which fell on a surface
hoar layer formed the night before.
This buried surface hoar layer can still be reactive to a ski cut or a
skiers weight.
So
the bottom line for today is an avalanche danger of MODERATE on open slopes steeper
than 30 to 35 degrees at all elevations especially on NE-N-NW aspects, but you
could see action on the open sunny slopes as well, harboring many weak
crust-facet interfaces.
Nordic and Skate Skiing:
New snow, so go out and break trail.