We have seen several snow storms pass through the area over the last week and it definitely made conditions in the backcountry a bit dangerous.  Castle Country Radio was able to speak over the telephone with the Utah Avalanche Center’s Brett Kobernik about the latest conditions.

The recent snowpack the fell across the state has brought on some natural avalanches throughout the mountains.  “We saw natural avalanches that released four days in a row and remotely triggered avalanches, that means human trigger avalanches that were triggered from a distance, so folks weren’t even on the slopes and this is a common characteristic with this type of sugary snow that we have at the base of the snowpack. It was an unprecedented period of dangerous conditions,” said Kobernik. Over the last week, there was a high avalanche danger listed for the mountains eight days in a row, which officials can’t remember when that has happened last.

There were no reports of injuries or fatalities along the Skyline but there were a few close calls in the Northen mountains of the state. “There were a couple of close calls around the state where people were fully buried and they were able to be dug out by their partners, because they had the correct avalanche rescue gear, they were able to be dug out, they were blue, not breathing, in two different cases, and they came around and were able to, you know, get out of the mountain with their own power,” stated Kobernik. He notes that a positive turnout was because those individuals were properly equipped with avalanche rescue gear.

As for the conditions this weekend and into next week, it looks as though the snow storms will taper off. “It looks to me like the storms are going to quiet down a little bit, we’re not going to see quite as much snow. We will be seeing snow starting again Saturday night and lasting into Wednesday. But it’s going to trickle in more, its not going to be these huge storms that we’ve seen. This is going to allow the avalanche danger to gradually decrease,” said Kobernik. Now conditions are still at a dangerous level and folks need to remember that when out in the mountains those conditions exist.

Folks can stay up to date on the avalanche conditions every morning at 7:00 am as the forecast for Manti Skyline is updated every day. Those conditions can be found by visiting the Utah Avalanche Center website at https://utahavalanchecenter.org/