By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

Following a week of mass snowfall along the Manti Skyline, which created extreme avalanche danger, conditions have normalized, but danger remains considerable in the high country. Brett Kobernik from the Utah Avalanche Center joined the KOAL newsroom to provide this weekend’s avalanche forecast.

Speaking on the brutal conditions seen the week before, Kobernik said,” I think the top of Huntington Canyon and the Fairview Canyon area did the best, somewhere around 14 inches or a bit more, and this did cause fairly widespread avalanche activity. Both natural and human-triggered avalanches were occurring last weekend. Nobody got caught. For the most part, most of the slides that were triggered were shallower, only involving the new snow, but they were large enough to cause harm.”

The avalanche expert continued,” Any avalanche that’s triggered can potentially be quite dangerous, but they were mostly involving the new snow. A few of them did step deeper into older weak snow, which is still our main concern. Now, since then, things have settled a bit, and all that new snow last weekend has kind of settled down, and we’re still looking at those persistent weak layers deeper in the snowpack. That continues to be the main concern.”

Shifting gears, Kobernik emphasized the danger posed by the continuous heavy winds in the backcountry,” wind has been the main focus on Avalanche Danger as far as what people will encounter out there. They’re going to find trouble in these wind-drifted areas, and it’s more so at the higher terrain on the east, with more east-facing slopes. We’ve had pretty steady winds from the west so that deposited snow on the east face builds up on top of those weak layers.”

Looking at the current forecast looming over the area, Kobernik shared,” I would not be surprised to see the danger drop into the moderate range by sometime this weekend. We just picked up about six inches of snow out of this last little snow event that happened on Thursday, and that didn’t really bump the danger a whole lot. It wasn’t a huge shock to the snowpack up there, and so that snow is going to settle, and we’re kind of in a holding pattern with those deeper weak layers. So things will stabilize to an extent, and we will see less dangerous conditions through the weekend. I guess that’s kind of the message. There’s still some concern, but we are currently seeing a decreasing trend in the Avalanche Danger over the weekend.”

As the danger continues to lower, Kobernik continued his weekly tradition of sharing safety tips for those looking to explore the skyline,” folks should definitely check that daily Avalanche forecast before heading out in the mountains. It’s updated by about 7 a.m. each morning. You can find it at utahavalanchecenter.org. That’ll give you the overall danger rating and talk about what kind of conditions you’ll be dealing with up there, where the avalanches are most likely to happen, how to avoid those areas, and weather and riding conditions. It’s all in that Avalanche forecast.” He added,” I highly recommend folks getting out there that are going to get out there on Saturday to check that forecast because we will have up-to-date information for Saturday, and it looks like it’s going to be a nice day up there. So I’m anticipating it to be a fairly busy weekend.”

Kobernik also discussed the importance of being properly equipped”: If you are going up there and you’re planning on traveling in avalanche terrain, which is anything over 30 degrees in slope steepness, be sure to have all the avalanche rescue equipment and know how to use it, and that includes an avalanche beacon, a shovel, and an avalanche probe.”

In closing, Koberink said,” We do have a decreasing avalanche danger, but that doesn’t mean there’s not going to be any danger up there this weekend. Check that daily avalanche forecast on Saturday morning to get the current conditions so you’re armed with some information. Know what to expect when you head up there on Saturday. Again, it’s not green-light conditions, so while the danger is decreasing, there’s still potential for avalanche accidents this weekend.”

To view the daily avalanche forecast, visit utahavalanchecenter.org.