Z. Miller

Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Days Fork » Hide A Way Park

Hideaway Park

10,000'

Northwest

Unknown

Skier

Unintentionally Triggered

Hard Slab

Persistent Weak Layer

Facets

18"

50'

600'

Out for a nice christmas day tour with a group of four. Skied an excellent lap of hero-snow in East-Bowl, then headed up West-Bowl to poke into Hideaway Park. We dug a pit in the top of Hideaway Park and received mixed signals from the snowpack after three compression tests and three extended column tests. We recognized our weak layer as well developed facets (mid-november cold snap NSF) ~30cm from the surface with a well-bonded slab (made up of the pre-christmas rime/snow/graupel events) above it. We decided that we felt safe moving along the lower-angle shoulder, expected the possibility of manageable avalanching, and ensured there was no one below before ski-cutting our shoulder. After a few cuts and during some safe-spot to safe-spot skiing one of our skiers (third to ski the slope) triggered and skied off a pocket on the more westerly slope of the shoulder that popped ~50' wide x18" deep and ran ~200' downslope. I then skied (safe-spot to safe-spot) the shoulder's more northern and mellow slope and triggered a larger pocket that popped ~50' wide x 18" deep and ran ~600' (full track). The second slide sympathetically released a small pocket in the trees next to it as it moved slowly down slope. Both ran near the ground on old November facets (buried deep) and left evidence in their bed surface of the buried dirt layer from earlier this fall. No one was caught in either slide and our party felt confident with the decisions we had made and the results of our actions. We recognized that the avalanches had re-confirmed our assumptions about our mixed pit findings as well as the persistent slab problem we are experiencing in the Wasatch.