March 18, 2021
Week in Review: March 12 - 18, 2021
Greg Gagne
Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.)
The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, March 12 through Thursday, March 18:
Summary: The usual pattern of Spring weather with periods of snow Friday/Saturday and Tuesday, as well as north and northeast winds that were especially strong Saturday into Sunday. These winds created fresh wind drifts with several human-triggered avalanches reported on Sunday, March 14.
Friday, March …
Read more March 10, 2021
Week in Review: March 5 - 11, 2021
Greg Gagne
Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.)
The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, March 5 through Thursday, March 11:
Summary: As evident by the week of all-green roses, for the first time this season, prolonged stability as the persistent weak layer has gone dormant and only minimal wet avalanche activity and sluffing in low-density storm snow.
Friday, March 5: Only minor, wet loose avalanche activity reported.
…
Read more March 4, 2021
Week in Review: February 26 - March 4, 2021
Greg Gagne
Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.)
The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, February 26 through Thursday, March, 4:
Summary:
Friday, February 26: Light snowfall and moderate to strong winds from the Southwest. No backcountry avalanches are reported other than some minor cracking in fresh wind drifts along upper-elevation ridgelines.
Saturday, February 27: A cold storm on a west/northwest flow moves in …
Read more March 4, 2021
Additional Questions regarding the Wilson Glades accident
Mark Staples
Below are questions we received about the Wilson Glades avalanche accident during a live Q&A session. We couldn't answer all the questions that people submitted during that session. We have put them into this blog and provided some answers and some links to get more information. The questions have been loosely sorted under categories listed in bold.
Timeline
Q: There were many questions regarding the timeline of when the avalanche happened and how quickly different people were dug out of the avalanche debris.
A: These are tough questions to answer. Imagine …
Read more February 25, 2021
Week in Review: February 19 - 25, 2021
Greg Gagne
Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.)
The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, February 19 through Thursday, February 25:
Summary: The past seven days were remarkably quiet with only a few backcountry avalanches reported. Two small storms - (1) Fri/Sat with 3-10" and (2) Wednesday with 1-5" helped freshen the snow surface. Strong winds from the west/northwest early in the period - especially at the upper elevations.
…
Read more February 22, 2021
Avalanche fatalities while solo and going uphill
Mark Staples
Regarding accidents with multiple fatalities:
One of the most basic things we all learn in introductory avalanche classes is to only expose one person at a time. The idea is to limit the number of possible victims to one. Unfortunately, there have been four events this winter involving multiple avalanche fatalities (2 in CO, 3 in CO, 3 in AK, and 4 in UT).
If we say that only one person should have died in each of those avalanches instead of multiple people, then there should have been four fatalities and eight people still alive.
Regarding solo travel and being …
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