This paper proposes an applicable approach for snow information abstraction in northern Xinjiang Basin using MODIS data. Linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA) was used to calculate snow cover fractions (SF) within a pixel, which was used to establish a regression function with NDSI. In addition, 80 snow depths samples were collected in the study region. The correlation between image spectra reflectance and snow depth as well as the comparison between measured snow spectra and image spectra was analyzed. An algorithm was developed for snow depth inversion on the basis of the correlation between snow depth and snow spectra in the region. The results indicated that the model of SF had a high accuracy with the mean absolute error 0.06 tested by 26 true measured values and the validation for snow depth model using another dataset with 50 sampling sites showed an RMSE of 1.63. Our study showed that MODIS data provide an alternative method for snow information abstraction through development of algorithms suitable for local application.