Preface As told by Derek DeBruin - We’d been home just long enough to say hello to my wife and son and then unload the car from a few days of winter mixed climbing in Utah’s west desert. With both work and personal outings coming up in the next week, I was catching up on weather forecasts, the avalanche bulletin, and field observations. Standing in front of the fridge, I scrolled through a large list of avalanches in the central Wasatch for the previous day, January 5th. My climbing partner found the chips and salsa while I settled on an orange, sharing the …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday Feb 15 through Thursday Feb 21: Summary: Periods of west/northwest winds deposit fresh wind slabs at the mid and upper elevations, with many wind-sheltered slopes holding cold, dry powder from recent storms. A few significant human-triggered avalanches, including one full burial. As indicated in the danger roses through the week, increasing …

I made these for myself to get a handle on all the storms and snowfall in the month of February. Snowfall is harder to track and compare from one storm to another than the water amounts. If you take a certain amount of snow and melt it, these numbers represent the depth of water you would have. Some snow can be dense and heavy. Other snow can be light and less dense. Typically an inch of water produces 10-12 inches of snow. If it is colder, it makes more light snow. To put these numbers in perspective - 1 inch of water covering a football field would weigh a quarter million pounds …

On Saturday, January 5th, I issued what turned out to be the most blown avalanche forecast of my 20-year career. And not by a little. My forecast stated that the avalanche danger in the backcountry was LOW. By the end of the day, we heard about eight skier-triggered avalanches with four people caught and carried in separate events, with one visit to the emergency room. What happened? The holiday storms wrapped up New Year’s Eve after producing 31”/1.84” water from Christmas to New Year’s. On New Year’s Day, the upper level trough pinched off and the winds picked up …

In this podcast, we sit down with Ian McCammon. Ian holds a PhD in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on robotics and sensory development and had always been an avid boater, climber, and backcountry skier. The avalanche-related death of his friend Steve Carruthers in February of 1995 greatly impacted Ian and he soon left the engineering world for one of outdoor education and research. From the late 90s until just a few years ago, Ian dove into avalanche research and his papers run the gamut from fracture mechanics to safety messaging to structural weaknesses in the snowpack. …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday Feb 8 through Thursday Feb 14: Before we proceed with a summary of weather and avalanches, we sadly note that this past week we had two avalanche fatalities, bringing the number of avalanche fatalities this season in Utah to 4. The staff of the Utah Avalanche Center sends our sincere condolences to families and friends of Bradley Stapley and Jason …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday Feb 1 through Thursday Feb 7: Summary: After an extended period of high pressure, a long-duration storm system enters the state during the weekend, lasting through Wednesday morning. Initially arriving with a warmer southwest flow, the series of storms are capped by a cold northwest flow. A significant amount of snow and water added to the snowpack. …