Avalanche: Figure 8 Hill

Observer Name
observer
Observation Date
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Avalanche Date
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Brighton Perimeter » Figure 8 Hill
Location Name or Route
Figure 8 Hill
Elevation
9,800'
Aspect
Northeast
Slope Angle
35°
Trigger
Natural
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Weak Layer
New Snow
Depth
Unknown
Width
400'
Vertical
Unknown
Comments
From one of our top notch observers:
Widespread soft slab naturals from the winds: As noted by call, Far rider's right side of Figure 8 had a natural at 9:30, 60 feet wide and 14 to 18 inches deep, ran 250 feet, then within 5 minutes almost all the rest of Figure 8 went leaving only a 100 foot panel on the rider's right side between the first slide. Initiated at the top of the hill on the lower angle start of the run in what appeared to be a thin hard slab from loading, as it descended it gauged out deeper at the upper rollover taking out chunks of all the new snow, it had wrapped all the way around into the cliff bands well off Figure 8 proper to rider's left and even took out the normal area of the skin trail up high, and possibly sympathetically took out a cliff band over 200 feet away from the entire slide pack. Without this pocket, it was at least 500 feet wide. The crown face was 12 to 16 inches deep; and it reload within th next 45 minutes, weak layer appeared to be light density layer below the density inversion from the day before that had produced all the activity on Friday.
Coordinates