By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News | Photo courtesy of Skyline Avalanche

As the avalanche season approaches its end, experts warn that caution is still advised while recreating in Utah’s mountains. This is no different along the Manti Skyline. Avalanche Expert Brett Kobernik from the Utah Avalanche Center joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss safety tips alongside this weekend’s avalanche forecast.

“March delivered quite a bit of snow and quite a bit of avalanche activity. All these storms have brought us up to normal snow and water numbers for the season now. So that’s been good news. But it has been a little bit touchy. We’ve been having issues with these older weak layers that formed during the dry periods early in the winter,” said Kobernik.

He continued,” Things have calmed down, but we’re still concerned about those layers moving into the tail end of the season here. That’s kind of an unfortunate thing.”

Speaking on the current snowpack structure, Kobernik drew historical comparisons to what we see today. “I noticed that the last year we dealt with a similar snowpack was 2022. And that year, a string of avalanches broke into older weak layers deep in the snow. And the thing is, usually, we’re not concerned about that at this time of the season. Everything is healed up, and the snowpack is stable. But this is a little bit of an odd situation. So that year, we still had avalanches breaking deep into March. The last one that I recorded that year broke deep was April 2nd. So this year has a very similar snowpack, if not worse.”

Currently, the danger in bottom half of the Skyline sits in the low to moderate range. But as you get higher in elevation, that danger increases to a considerable rating. “The majority of the terrain is fairly safe. It’s not until you start pushing it into the steep stuff, high elevations and those north through east facing slopes,” said Kobernik.

Another factor raising danger levels in the springtime is wet snow. Kobernik explained that, luckily, this is an easy danger to avoid: ” If you’re out there and you’re noticing it’s really sloppy, and you’re punching deep into the snowpack. That’s the time to avoid being on or below any steep slopes.”

In closing, Kobernik shared,” We have a little bit of an out-of-the-ordinary situation this year, where usually at this point, we have very stable conditions. And it’s not the case. I don’t totally trust it out there. So, I’m still urging folks to use caution. We can often just go willy-nilly and go anywhere we want to at this point. But I don’t feel confident that that’s the case this year. So continue to use caution as we slide through the tail end of the season.”

To stay up-to-date with avalanche conditions across the state, visit utahavalanchecenter.org.