Avalanche: Two Trees

E, Pereira & Miles B.

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » Two Trees

Two Trees

10,100'

Southeast

Natural

Dry Loose

New Snow

New Snow

Unknown

Unknown

Our objective was to ski Two trees via Cardiff Pass. We ultimately made two laps out of it. Our main concerns were wind loading and how the new snow bonded to the old snow interface. On our drive up we did notice ski tracks on the south face of superior as well as little superior so we felt a bit calmer about people testing out the wind/new problem for us as our first lap (around 9ish) was during a break in the storm. We felt cautiously optimistic on our way up to ski two trees, using small test slopes and fast pole isolation along our ascent. There was no new snowfall during our first lap. We did not notice any red flags for south/southeast facing terrain on our first lap until we reached the pass. We noticed smaller pockets of wind loading along the cornices at the ridge bending into the south facing terrain at cardiff pass but the heaviest wind loading we saw was on east/north facing terrain of the ridge from the previous day's winds. There was also an avalanche that seems to have failed on the new/old snow interface that was NE facing between powerline and cardiff pass on our first lap (see first two photos on looker's right, all from first lap). There were no tracks in or out from the avalanche area. It appeared to run most of the way down the slope, but the wind loading left us not interested in grabbing further dimentions of the slide. During our second lap it started snowing small light amd dry flakes as we were halfway up cardiff pass. Light at first, the snowfall rate increased to moderate levels limiting visibility as we reached the pass. Wind gusts were also getting more consistent but tje speed was generally the same as lap 1. The cornices did show further growth to the south side. Continuing to isolate small columns with our pole as we worked our way up reveleaved no new signs of instability. As we were passing pole line, we noticed some new point releases on the NE facing terrain in a similar area to the previously mentioned avalanche but the poor visibility limited our ability to grab additional photos. The top portion of the skiers left side of Two Trees skied very similarly to the top of the right but we did notice deeper and more slough running further. Of going left into the choke be aware there are still some rocks that can bite you! As we made our way past the choke we saw some small point releases over the left hanging cliffs and more moderate running sluffs from our turns. We decided it was a good thing we were were leaving when we did (which was somewhere between 1/1:30) as signs of new snow instability were growing.