Joe Lohr

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » Grizzly Gulch

Grizzly Gulch

9,300'

Northwest

36°

Skier

Remotely Triggered

Hard Slab

Persistent Weak Layer

Facets

Unknown

100'

60'

1

While skinning up Grizzly Gulch, my partner and I decided to change our plans from going to Patsy Marley to skiing the south side of Grizzly Gulch. When we changed our minds, we decided to cross the gulch at Chad's gap. When we came to a steeper section on the way into the gulch, we decided to cross it one at a time. While about 40ft ahead of my partner I was fooled into a false sense of security by my perceived brevity of a steep slope, and decided to continue. Three steps into the slope the entire face broke about five feet above me. It was a foolish decision not to turn back and continue up the cat track and around upon first sight of this slope. Don't make the same mistake I did under the impression that it will save you time, and don't allow yourself to downplay the risks as I did: I was lucky cut to my left and stay on top of this slide. It is difficult to say whether the slide breaking to the facets was because of a step down from sloughing or caused entirely by my full weight being added to the snowpack. Because the area just above the slide still seemed liable to slide we did not get close enough to the crown for precise depth measurements, I quickly got out of the way and snapped the photos shown below, then called the slide in.