With a string of significant storms over the last week in the Western U.S., conditions in the backcountry have gotten dicey. According to reports this morning, a pair of skiers triggered an avalanche in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon yesterday, home to Snowbird and Alta Resorts.
The avalanche was estimated to be 100 feet wide, and set off above Tanners Flat Campground in the Red Pine drainage, which is down-canyon from Snowbird. “They were caught. They weren’t buried. They were injured and they had to be hauled out of there,” Mark Staples with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center told local media.
According to the Utah Avalanche Center’s preliminary report, two skiers were exiting the drainage when the skier in front triggered the avalanche. The skier behind began searching but stopped when she saw the skier on the surface of the snow with injuries and called 911. The UAC called it a partial burial and just that single, injured skier, according to the center, had to be hauled out by rescue personnel with injuries to his leg, ribs, and face. “Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, Alta and Snowbird ski patrols saved his life,” Staples said.
The Utah Avalanche Center is calling for extreme caution on not just peaks and exposed high-alpine areas, which is obvious, but intermediate slopes as well that lead into terrain traps like gullies. “The recent avalanche activity we have been seeing on the northern end of the compass at the mid- and lower-elevation bands is a huge red flag,” wrote the center. “These elevation bands are especially dangerous right now, and slopes can be triggered remotely, or from below. There is enough snow above summer hiking trails where people could easily get caught and buried in terrain traps. Give extra caution to the mid- and lower-elevation bands today.”
That information could be applied to most areas in the Western United states that have seen significant snowfall in recent days. Be careful out there.
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