Lone skier completely buried and rescued by two other parties in the area. Buried approximately four feet deep for ten minutes. Powderbird evacuated them on a backboard.
Avalanche Conditions:
Yesterday there were two more unintentional human triggered avalanches in the backcountry and both were very close calls. First, a lone skier triggered a hard slab avalanche, 2 feet deep and 150 feet wide, off the steep, east-facing, upper ridge line between Cardiac Ridge and Cardiac Bowl in Cardiff Fork of Big Cottonwood Canyon. The victim rode the slide 800 vertical feet and was buried with their head about four feet deep for under 10 minutes. Two other parties luckily happened to be in the area, and three people converged on the site with their beacons and quickly located the victim using beacons. One was Aaron Hughes, a critical care nurse. The others were Marla Baily and Mark White, both local hardcore backcountry skiers with medical training. The victim was breathing when they were dug out and Wasatch Powderbird Guides responded, put them on a backboard and then a medical helicopter evacuated them. Apparently, the victim is doing fine, thanks to the heroic efforts of others. This was a well tracked-up slope and the victim decided to go a bit higher in the bowl than the other tracks, where he triggered the avalanche.
The second incident occurred shortly afterwards in nearby Day’s Fork when a skier triggered a steep, north facing slope about 8 turns down. The slide broke well above them, 2 feet deep and 30 feet wide and they got banged up pretty badly on trees during the 800 foot ride and lost one ski, but he was able to ski out on his own.
By my reckoning, this is by far the most active and longest-lasting avalanche cycle in the 22 year history of the Utah Avalanche Center. In the past three weeks, we’ve had an incredible 62—count them, 62—unintentional human triggered avalanches in the backcountry, averaging nearly three per day. This doesn’t even count the intentionally triggered avalanches in the backcountry—for instance, from a slope cut—or the large numbers of avalanches from control work by the resorts, nor the ones we haven’t heard about, which could easily triple these numbers. To put this in perspective, Utah averages 100 unintentional human triggered avalanches in the backcountry each season and if we keep up this pace, we’ll end up the season with over 400 avalanche incidents. Incredibly, no one has been killed yet although there have been two complete burials and several serious injuries. (For a complete list of avalanches, click HERE. For photos, click HERE.)
If you listened to the science fiction by the television meteorologists on the news last night, you would think these avalanches were caused by warming temperatures, but actually, temperature probably had little to do with it. It’s just the same old broken record that has been playing for the past three weeks. A slab of snow a couple feet deep sits on top of an astoundingly weak layer of faceted snow that was formed during the 5-week drought in November and early December. It still collapses everywhere when you travel across it and it’s taking an incredibly long time to stabilize. People on the east slopes of the Rockies are used to these conditions, but most people in Utah have never seen it before. (For a graphic of the snowpack click HERE.)
