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[Utah Avalanche Center]

For the third day in a row, Aros.net, where Avalanche .org?s server is located is experiencing ?network problems?, so web-based products are not available. Tonight is a fundraiser dinner at The Canyons with guest speaker Olympic Gold Medal Winner Jim Shea, which our partners, the Friends of the UAC, are hosting. There will be half day avalanche class at the Canyons this Saturday and Sunday, February 3rd and 4th. (for more information and to register, call 435-615-3325) Sad news: Yesterday, Ed LaChapelle, considered the grandfather of American avalanche research, died while attending the memorial service of his ex-wife and good friend, Delores LaChapelle in Silverton, Colorado. He died while skiing. Ed did most all of his pioneering avalanche research at Alta from the early 1950?s until the early 1970?s. I was lucky enough to call him a friend. He will be missed. Current Conditions: Our saga of our character-inducing season continues?. The good news is that we got a desperately-needed, freshening-up of 5-7 inches of light snow, but the bad news is that strong winds came up overnight to ruin most of it. Winds on most of the ridge tops are blowing from the west 25, gusting to 50 and 40 gusting to 60 on the highest peaks. And it may be windy, but at least it?s cold with 5 below zero temperatures on the highest peaks and 7 degrees at 8,000? where winds are gusting to 20 mph. Snowpack and Avalanche Conditions: It?s a simple setup. Wind loading is the word for the day. Avoid any steep slopes with recent deposits of wind drifted snow. Any questions? Wind deposits look smooth and rounded, while wind eroded snow looks sand-blasted. The wind slabs will be mostly soft and mostly around a foot deep, but they could be much deeper in the wind exposed areas. These wind slabs are sitting on top of very slick, hard crusts in the wind and sun-exposed areas and they are sitting on top of extremely weak faceted snow in the wind and sun-sheltered, north facing slopes. Either way, they will likely be quite sensitive to the weight of a person. Bottom Line for the Salt Lake, Park City, Provo and Ogden area mountains: Today, slopes with recent wind deposits steeper than about 35 degrees have a MODERATE avalanche danger. If the wind slabs are thicker than about a foot or if they are hard slabs, you can bump the danger up a notch. On non-wind affected terrain and on slopes less steep than about 35 degrees, the avalanche danger is generally LOW but watch for sluffing of the new snow on steep slopes. Mountain Weather: Unfortunately, the ridge top winds will continue to blow 35-40 mph from the northwest today and most of Saturday and they will finally calm down on Sunday as a ridge builds into us. We may get a few light snow showers lingering today. Ridge top temperatures will remain near zero today but they will warm up to the mid 20?s on Saturday and be near freezing on Sunday. For the extended forecast, we return to smoggy in the valleys and warm in the mountains Sunday through about Thursday. But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon as the long range models continue to think we will finally have a pattern change later in the week with storms coming across California and into us from the west. California has not gotten hardly any snow yet this winter. Announcements: Yesterday, the Wasatch Powderbird Guides did not fly, and today if they can get out they will be in Cardiff, Silver, Days, Mineral, Grizzly, American Fork and White Pine. With questions regarding their areas of operation call 742-2800. On February 8th at 7:30, there will be a Teton Skiing documentary at Brewvies. Details are below, or for more information Listen to the advisory. Try our new streaming audio or podcasts UDOT highway avalanche control work information can be found HERE or by calling (801) 975-4838. Our new, state wide tollfree hotline is 1-888-999-4019. (For early morning detailed avalanche activity report hit option 8) For a list of avalanche classes, click HERE For our classic text advisory click HERE. To sign up for automated e-mails of our graphical advisory click HERE We appreciate any snowpack and avalanche observations you have, so please leave us a message at (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email us at uac@avalanche.org. (Fax 801-524-6301) 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. Evelyn Lees will update this advisory by 7:30 on Saturday morning, and thanks for calling. unsubscribe-61498713f@in.m1e.net
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