Avalanche: Little Superior 1/26/2011

Observer Name:

McKee

Observation Date:

01/26/2011

Occurrence Date:

01/26/2011

Occurrence Time:

7:30am

Region:

Little Superior
Little Cottonwood Canyon
Salt Lake

Location Name:

Little Superior Right

Location

40° 35' 34.8072" N, 111° 39' 34.5204" W

Avalanche Characteristics

Elevation:

10100'

Aspect:

Southeast

Slope Angle:

Trigger:

Skier

Trigger: additional info:

Unintentionally Triggered

Avalanche Type:

Soft Slab

Weak Layer:

Density Change

Depth (avg):

12"

Width:

60'

Vertical:

1750'

General Comments

Saw the debris driving to work, saw fresh traverse tracks leading into and away from the slide. Seems like two folks involved. Seems like they got out with much incident and had a good run down.

From bellow it looked much bigger and deeper and I thought for sure it had something to do with the mlk crust. Turns out it was 3-18" deep. The weak layer was a density change in Tuesdays snow; stellars on the bed surface mixed graupel above, 4 finger wind blown. The MLK crust was burried a meter down in this location. I got a STE, (CT2Q1, ECTN) x2 on the week layer. I got a CTN for the facets around the MLK crust, which is about 3 inches thick with 1-2mm facets below. As the avalanche descended it intrained all the new snow, I think, on the MLK crust which isn't as burried as deep further down the slope. This allowed such a small avalanche to travel such a long way. Saw the same thing from a natural cornice fall in Whitepine, Whitepine Chutes 3 and 4 and antoher skier triggered slide later in the day under skiers left main Superior.

Mark White photo:

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