Saturday, December 11, 2004 7:30 Am


   Good morning, this is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah
   Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather
   advisory.  Today is Saturday, December 11, 2004, and its 7:30 am.


   We have allowed the Avalanche Warning to expire but conditions remain
   very dangerous.


   Avalanche Conditions:

   Unfortunately, an avalanche fatality occurred late yesterday afternoon
   just south of Twin Lakes Pass, which is a backcountry area midway
   between Alta, Solitude and Brighton resorts.  Two skiers climbed up on
   the Big Cottonwood side of the ridge and they triggered a large, deep
   avalanche which buried and killed a 23-year-old from Salt Lake City.
   His partner, who was not buried, located the victim using avalanche
   rescue beacons and dug him out within a few minutes but he did not
   respond to CPR.  For more details, call our more detailed line at
   346-1591 and we will post more details tomorrow after Drew Hardesty
   investigates the accident today.


   It was a wild day yesterday.  The avalanche warning and a HIGH danger
   lived up to its billing.  As forecast, several more large, natural
   avalanches popped out as rapid warming in the afternoon continued to
   push an already-cranky snowpack past its breaking point.  On west
   facing Patsy Marly, a backcountry area just east of Alta Ski Area (and
   just on the other side of the hill from the fatality) several large,
   natural avalanches fractured out in the afternoon.  Also, there was a
   disconcerting, large natural on an east-facing, unskied, but closed,
   terrain at mid Little Cottonwood Canyon.  Avalanche control by the
   resorts continued to produce large, scary avalanches, especially in
   uncompacted, unskied terrain.


   Yesterday was the first clear day after the storm, which allowed us to
   get a first glimpse at the carnage in the backcountry.  I will update
   the avalanche list and photos page later in the morning.
   Nearly all of these avalanches were deep, wide monsters where even the
   small ones would ruin your day.  Most were breaking 2-3 feet deep and
   up to several hundred feet wide.  The storm added huge amounts of
   water weight, which created a very stiff, heavy slab, which is sliding
   on a very weak layer of faceted snow and surface hoar that formed
   during the clear weather in November.  Its the avalanche equivalent of
   slamming a concrete block down on top of a pile of tortilla chips.


   Although the avalanche activity during the storm was quite widespread,
   there are still a disconcerting number of slopes which did not slide
   and they are still hanging in the balance just waiting for a trigger.
   In addition, temperatures are 10 degrees warmer this morning than
   yesterday morning with ridge top temperatures between 35 and 40 this
   morning, which should continue to make the snowpack cranky.
   Especially avoid steep north through east facing slopes, even at mid
   and lower elevations where the weak faceted snow was weakest before it
   got buried.  I wish I could continue to call it a HIGH danger today,
   but it doesnt quite fit the definition of HIGH, so I wont call it
   HIGH.  It just barely on the CONSIDERABLE side of HIGH.  Instead, its
   a very HIGH-pucker-factor CONSIDERABLE.  Get the point?  This means
   that human triggered avalanches are probable and natural avalanches
   are still possible.  The bottom line today is that no way, no how
   should anyone jump into steep terrain.  Just give it a rest this
   weekend.  The surface snow is dense, supportable Styrofoam and you can
   have plenty of fun on slopes less than 30 degrees.  If you want
   something steeper, go to the resorts.  If you want LOW danger terrain
   today in the backcountry stay off of and out from underneath any slope
   steeper than 30 degrees.  Finally, todays extremely warm temperatures
   will cause continued wet sluffing, rollerballs and occasional wet
   slabs at lower elevations and on sun exposed slopes.


   Mountain Weather: 

   It should be a real cooker in the mountains today with ridge top
   temperatures around 40 and 8,000 temperatures just under 50 degrees.
   In addition, we will have some scattered high clouds, which may cause
   some green housing and very soggy snow at lower elevations.  Ridge top
   winds will be around 20 mph from the west and southwest.  We will have
   a similar, but somewhat cooler, day on Sunday with a weak brush-by on
   Monday and a chance of some more snow by about mid week.