Avalanche: Catherine's Pass

Stauss, Williams, White

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » Catherine's Pass

Catherines Pass

10,100'

Southwest

Unknown

12"

10'

After a long runout fall, it finally felt like winter up there today: snow, wind, and avalanches. Starting at around 10am, we traveled from the Grizzly Gulch trailhead up the Summer Road/ Sunnyside area to the normal Catherine's Pass hiker's trail and onward to Point Supreme (along with everyone else in the Wasatch). Along the way we encountered several red flags including cracking and thundering collapses in multiple areas, including sheltered terrain near the car. It didn't take much to understand what was going on with the snowpack: last night's snow and wind formed a dense, stout slab about a foot+ thick that was sitting on facets at the ground. We felt this very upside down and hollow snowpack in pole pens throughout the tour. Upon gaining the flank/ shoulder of "So Long," I noticed a small recent avalanche in one of the Spiney Chutes. This could have easily been triggered remotely from someone earlier in the morning, or gone naturally before skiers arrived. Apologies for the bad photos, but hopefully the idea gets across that even a small slide like this could be very nasty with rocks and stumps aplenty. In the upper elevations the wind was blowing from the west consistently in the strong category, light snow was still falling out of the sky, and the sky was mostly obscured. The crown of the avi I saw had already started to degrade on account of the wind. The riding conditions were pretty decent - surfy fun snow that had thankfully caked in around the rocks pretty well. It's a good time for cleaning off the cobwebs, learning about a nasty snowpack structure, and practicing with your beacon (nice to see Coyne leading an epic beaconeering group)! Hopefully it keeps comin'...