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, December, 25 through Thursday, December 31: Summary: Small amounts of new snow and periods of strong winds. Several avalanches reported to the UAC, all failing on the persistent weak layer of snow that is now buried down 12-18". Many of these slides were triggered remotely, indicating the sensitivity of our cranky snowpack. Friday, …

For avalanche forecasters, choosing the appropriate avalanche danger level is a difficult process. It may appear obvious to move down the scale once immediate storm instabilities have stabilized, but it is a bit more complicated when the avalanche problem is a buried persistent weak layer. According to James Floyer at Avalanche Canada, having a persistent weak layer buried in the snowpack "decouples the avalanche hazard from the storm cycle." Though over time it may become harder to trigger an avalanche that fails in a buried persistent weak layer, they are no less dangerous as they …

Below is an email thread between UAC staff - storytelling or just lessons they have learned. We are sharing it here for everyone to read. A good example happened to me a number of years ago. My partner and I had done tons of ECT’s and consistently gotten ECTN (that means no propagation - theoretically a good result). We kept thinking “there just isn’t enough of a slab yet.” But here’s the thing: this type of snowpack will surprise you. It surprised us when we remotely triggered 6 small avalanches at the same time (photo). The slab was only fist hardness (aka very soft), but …

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Guest essay by long time avalanche professional Pete Earle - I’ve been lucky to get out in the Wasatch quite a bit over the past month or so, between teaching a few avalanche courses and touring for myself. Thus far, I’ve been impressed with the backcountry community’s ability to choose appropriate terrain based on our current avalanche problem. I haven’t seen large slopes get center-punched, and folks are mostly keeping slope angles mellow and seem to be stepping into terrain thoughtfully. My fear going forward is similar to what we’ve seen during …

Building a house of cards… Fall and early winter of the 2020-2021 season has been marked by several relatively small early season storms. Drought persists with the snowpack in the La Sals at 19% of median as of 12/23/2020. Currently, there is 0.8” of snow water equivalent (SWE) at the SNOWTEL site. While this site sits at a relativity low elevation, it does provide a good record of snowfall events and temperature trends. The first storm occurred on October 25th and deposited around 1” of SWE equating to 7” of snow at the La Sal Mtn SNOWTEL site (9,578’ elevation). …

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, December, 18 through Thursday, December 24: Summary: A very active week with over 30 natural and human-triggered avalanches reported to the UAC. Snow/Water totals for the week: Upper LCC: 27-31"/1.8" Upper BCC: 15-20"/1.1-1.3" Park City Ridgeline: 14"/1.1" Storm and wind-driven snow fell on a faceted (weak) …