Anna V, Louis N

Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Kessler Peak » Catchers Mit

Kessler Peak

9,600'

North

36°

Snowboarder

20'

My partner and I noticed some womping and cracking around our tracks at certain parts of the skin up to Catcher's Mitt from the Mill D side. We dug a pit about half way up on a 38 deg slope to see what was going on; the snow pack was probably close to 10 ft but we only dug about 4 ft down. There was about 6 in of fresh snow that felt very light on top of a sun crust, then some dense snow below the crust followed but another crust layer 6 more inches deep. The new snow started to slide after the first 5 hits on the shovel but the deeper layer didn't slide until about 35 hits. When we jumped on the edge above the pit we couldn't make it slide. We decided to keep exploring. A little higher up we could trigger small sloughs of new snow by jumping, but no propagation. We turned around at the apron below East Couloir. We were expecting the new snow to slough and avoided terrain traps on the way down. At approximately 9600 ft, a bit below East Couloir and Catchers Mitt, I made a couple sharp cuts on the snowboard and triggered a small slide of new snow. It didn't propagate beyond my line and traveled probably 120 ft or less. Probably not enough to carry anyone but if this was over a terrain trap and caught someone unawares it could potentially cause problems.