Erik, Kordell, Hayden

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » White Pine

West Scotties

9,500'

West

37°

Skier

Intentionally Triggered

Soft Slab

New Snow

New Snow/Old Snow Interface

12"

100'

200'

We chose West Scotties for the mix of somewhat steep, consistent fall line w lots of trees, i.e. islands of safety. Snow conditions changed surprisingly quickly from dry and light around noon, to slightly damp and crumbly with a few, small roller balls on the first lap, to moderately cohesive with rollerballs running and growing on the second, to big naturals on the third. Under the storm snow on the west aspect there was a slightly noticeable crust on the upper third of the slope -- measuring from the ridge to the summer trail -- also a thin, but consistently noticeable crust in the middle third, and a firm crust in the bottom third. Apparently it rained in LCC on Monday. Maybe this was that or a melt/freeze crust? FIrst lap was all good. Great turns up top with stable snow. Middle third we cut above a few gullies, and it ran, but didn't gather or pull in other adjacent snow. We traversed out right to a skinner in sight from there and re-ascended. Second lap was more similar than different in the upper two thirds, although the snow had gotten thick, like ice cream. The bottom third was sketchy. Our cuts here flushed the snow we expected, but pulled in adjacent snow along the funnel-like terrain features. Shooting cracks occurred left, right and in some instances above where the cuts were made. Due to the thicker crust towards the bottom of the slope, all that snow picked up a bunch of energy and ran fast and far. The three in our group descended one at a time from tree to tree, or along the bed surface of a slide path until we were out of that zone. We bailed part way up the skinner for a third run over in Scotties Bowl, because we came across multiple slides, some completely natural with no tracks in sight, some big and wide debris piles, and we had no way to know if another party was above us to potentially bring a slide down on top of us. Danger seemed mainly Considerable with pockets of High, particularly at lower elevations where there was a pronounced crust and later in the afternoon when the storm snow had begun to bond. We even got lots of cracks and slabs of storm snow to flush through the trees in the runout above the bridge at around 8500 feet. Today was a day to expect some danger, pay attention for it, and make conservative decisions. We hope that everyone who went out in the backcountry today came back. Photos: (1) a natural late in the day, (2) the bed surface of another slide, and (3) the debris pile of a third slide