Avalanche: Little Water Peak 1/3/2012

Observer Name: 
mark white
Observation Date: 
01/05/2012
Occurrence Date: 
01/03/2012
Occurrence Time: 
Unknown
Region: 
Salt Lake
Mill Creek Canyon
Little Water
Little Water Peak
Location Name: 
Little Water Peak
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Location

40° 40' 19.1964" N, 111° 37' 40.8252" W
Avalanche Characteristics
Elevation: 
9400'
Aspect: 
North
Northeast
Slope Angle: 
35
Trigger: 
Natural
Avalanche Type: 
Soft Slab
Weak Layer: 
Facets Below Crust
Depth (avg): 
12"
Width: 
70'
Vertical: 
500'
General Comments

Went to take a look at Little Water Peak in Millcreek canyon today. The main face of the peak had not avalanched. But after skiing down the NW ridge about 250ft saw a avalanche that looked to happened in the last 2 to 3 days, crown was blown in a bit but the debris looked fairly fresh.

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General Comments 2

Couple pics of the crown, ran on facets under the fragile rain crust. Crown was about 18 inches at its deepest point, but averaged around a foot.

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General Comments 3

My theory on the trigger as strange as it may sound, is that a wind pillow with a cornice on it which was sitting on a 20 degree slope collapsed and remotely triggered the slide. There was a vertical crack running about 40ft from the cornice drop to the upper most part of the crown. The strange part is that there was a bunch of coyote tracks on the wind pillow and below the cornice drop, thinking the coyote might have collapsed the wind pillow and remoted the slide when the cornice dropped, just a theory or an edjucated quess. no sign of anyone being there recently. Nice batch of surface hoar growing in the drainage bottom.

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