Peter A

Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Reynolds Pk

Reynolds Peak East Bowl

9,300'

East

37°

Natural

Cornice Triggered

Cornice Fall

Cornice

Unknown

100'

400'

Went up Reynolds to ski the N facing glades this morning. There was only about a 2" of new snow, plenty of old tracks still visible. It was windy on top and snow was moving, but we didn't large wind slabs below the summit on the north ridge. We hadn't been planning to ski the East face, but with little new snow and wall to wall old tracks we decided it would be an efficient way to ski out. We entered the bowl from the N shoulder, about 150 feet below the summit to give the huge cornice a wide berth. I skied down, skied off to the side of the first bench, and turned to watch my partner. Just before he skied, a 100 section of cornice calved off with a huge crash and tumbled down the center of the bowl, stopping where the slope angle decreased. It entrained some new snow, but did not seem to trigger a slab. The section that went was just north of the collapsed section that Mark White posted an observation about last week. Sorry, no pictures. My standard operating procedure with cornices has always been to give them room, and never hang out underneath them, but I've never avoided skiing a stable slope with a safe entry just because it had a cornice on top. I guess I have to rethink that approach on warm, windy days when the cornices are larger than we are used to around here.