Latest News – Wallowa Avalanche Center

Traveled up to Aneroid Lake area yesterday. I have updated info on the Forum page (click on Wallowa Lake). Indepth details, snowprofiles and pics will be on our normal Friday morning report.

We will be setting up a booth at this years Winterfest Poker Run at the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo Grounds Thunder Room January 9th at 9am. Stop by the booth and see how avalanche practitioners do their work, what tools they carry and most importantly what safety equipment you should carry and know how to use when traveling in avalanche terrain.

Also on Tuesday January 12th is a FREE Avalanche Awareness talk. It’s at the Joseph Community Center at 6pm and part of the fabulous Eagle Cap Extreme activities at Race Central. The Payette Avalanche Center is visiting us here to assist us in the talk. Great videos of real avalanches, photos, etc., then some really good info on how to become Avy Savvy, learn the basics and how to learn more.

The Board of Directors, Advisors and Officers of the Wallowa Avalanche Center wish all of our backcountry recreational users a very happy holiday season.

We’ve put together a slightly more expansive weekly current conditions summary (this week only) available this morning to help you plan your upcoming weekend and this next week until New Years. Check it out.

Board of Directors
Penny Arentsen
Roger Averbeck
Ken Bronec
Julian Pridmore-Brown
Keith Stebbings, President
Charla Whiting
Advisors
Connelly Brown
Jerry Hustafa
Don Sharaf
Sweyn Wall
Secretary/Treasurer
Dana Nave

On Saturday we took a tour up Middle Ridge in the Wing Ridge area. We found good snow starting in the parking lot all the way up, although a few rocks and trees were still peeking out in places. Temperatures were in the highs 30’s all day, so I imagine the snow may have crusted a bit. Snow conditions required careful route selection. In the parking lot we observed a small slide between South and Fat ridge which added to our level of caution. In addition we had several reports last week of natural and human triggered avalanche activity.

We followed the ridge line up to about 8250′, just below the top. We dug a number of hand pits throughout the climb up and noted a significant buried facet layer with a great deal of spatial variability. Keith will elaborate more on this week’s conditions summary. On the way down, as the sun moved behind the ridge, we noted a little bit of a crust setting up. At about 7850′ we stopped and dug a test pit in about 110cm of wind loaded snow. We’ll have a full report on Friday morning! Merry Christmas!

This morning (Tuesday) has a light dusting of snow in the Grande Ronde Valley which fell last night. West of the Wallowas received almost an inch of snow on the valley floors, while reports this morning indicate a trace in the Wallowa Valley. Telemetry data indicates that about 7-9 inches on new snow fell overnight at the higher elevations.

Julian P.B.

Two snowmobilers where caught in an avalanche near Cascade, Idaho on Thursday December 17. One was injured, the other buried and killed. Additional details of the snowpack conditions leading to the accident and other info can be found at our next door neighbors Payette Avalanche Center website http://www.payetteavalanche.org/.

The Payette Avalanche Center has an avalanche hazard scale level posted today as CONSIDERABLE for their area. Remember that our snowpack so far this season is nearly identical to theirs.

Travel this weekend in the Wallowa’s in avalanche terrain requires excellent route finding and snowpack assessment skills.

We got a nice dumping of snow in the Grande Ronde Valley. Early this morning, I was running on Pumpkin Ridge in about 4 inches of very light powder. It made the hills just a little steeper!

Later today I finished up some work on the web site. We have received some excellent support and input from a number of individuals and Board members. I can’t thank you all enough!

On the forum we made some changes and additions to the categories. We are starting to see some more activity on the forum and we hope this is a continuing trend. We are especially happy that Forest Service staff have joined in to provide timely information on SnoParks and road conditions.

On the Education page we added a number of avy courses in the area coming up in January. We are sponsoring an Awareness event in Joseph in conjunction with the ECX Sled Dog race. We have a number of race volunteers interested and are looking forward to seeing some local backcountry users as well. If you are a local snowmobiler, snowboarder, skier, etc., this will be a great way to get some knowledge to keep you safe.

The Local Weather page contains some new links. A few weeks ago we visited the Weather Service Office in Pendleton. One of the topics we discussed was creating a forecast product tailored to the Wallowa Mountains. We really liked the Milepost Forecast product the NWS already produces, and they generously agreed to create a couple in the Wallowas for our use. They provide near-term, specific forecasts for temperature, cloud cover, precip type, snow fall amounts, plus more. Check it out!

These are a few of the highlights we made, and there are a number of small tweaks that were made as well. Please keep those suggestions coming!

Julian P.B.

Cold but not windy was the story today on Middle Ridge of the Wing Ridge ridgeline. -2F early afternoon up there. Plan on more cold continuing for another couple days which has been putting the Wallowa Facet Manufacturing facility into a ‘just before Christmas’ rush. All the details coming your way on Friday.

Ken Bronec has been busy at work for the last month, and then some, developing all the necessary infrastructure for an Observers Network that will be crucial for WAC’s success. We’re pulling together some very experienced and highly avalanche certified people who will gather for the official launch of this network on December 14th. We appreciate them volunteering their time for this public service. You will see their names here periodically on the website as the season unfolds and they begin sending in snow profiles and other data to WAC.

Another reminder to check out the latest Current Conditions summary tomorrow (Friday) first thing and every Friday.

Keith