Moab & La Sal Mountains Winter Recreation Report Friday, January 13th 2017

Well today is Friday the 13th, a significant day for some. I think it’s bad luck to be superstitious. Luckily, there has been massive amounts of snow all across the West. We hope you have had a chance to experience some of the powder. It just keeps snowing, this is the kind of storm cycle that can easily alter one’s life plan. Go to class, finish your degree? Nah, it snowed again, let’s go skiing! While we have received snow, and the skiing is good, the La Sals have not seen the sheer volume of snow as other locations that were directly hosed by the atmospheric river. The internet is covered in amazing photos of insanely deep snow so I won’t put any here. We do wish the best for anyone who is affected by flooding or other dangerous conditions caused by such massive storm.

DODGEBALL!

It’s that time of year again. We are so excited to be sponsoring the:

We will be giving away gift certificates for the best costumes of team members AND spectators. Seriously BEACON does some really great things for our community, come down and show your support. If you want to play, but don’t have enough for a full team, then come down to the store and we have a list of other folks just like you! REGISTER HERE

Road Conditions

Geyser Pass Road is being plowed today. The gate will be closed until snow removal operations are complete. It is expected to be sometime after Noon. Be very careful when passing or approaching the edge for any reason. I have had to pull 4 vehicles back up onto the road so far this year.

Grooming

LUNA has been doing their best to keep up with the snowfall. Grooming is scheduled for this afternoon.

Map

Come by the store to view a rough draft of our ski map of the La Sal Mountains!

Backcountry

Visit the Utah Avalanche Center for updates on snowpack, skiing, roads, and grooming.

Mountain Snowpack

Currently the Snotel site at Geyser Pass is reporting 36″ of snowpack and 9.5″ of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) This is 153% above normal. The Lake Tahoe area is around 200-230%. See the map below for totals around the west.

So we know the skiing is great with all of this snow, how about the rivers? https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/ has a water supply forecast showing the Green River at 140% and the Colorado at 120%.

Lake Powell inflow is 130% and you can see from the following graph how the the recent 2 weeks of snow have raised it from 91%.