A 54-year-old man died in an avalanche on Tuesday, December 31, the second avalanche-related fatality in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains in three days. The incident occurred within the Davenport Hill space of Little Cottonwood Canyon, east of Salt Lake Metropolis.
“A backcountry tourer on a splitboard was killed in an avalanche in Little Cottonwood Canyon on December 31, 2024, within the space of Davenport Hill.”
– avalanche.org
The Utah Avalanche Heart (UAC) reported that the sufferer, whose identification stays undisclosed, was touring alone on a splitboard within the Silver Fork space when the avalanche struck. The precise timing of the occasion is unsure, but it surely’s believed to have occurred Tuesday morning.
A skier from one other get together seen a single monitor main right into a latest avalanche particles area and alerted Alta Central. This triggered a multi-agency rescue crew response, together with the Division of Public Security, AirMed, Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, Salt Lake County Search and Rescue, Utah Division of Transportation, and the UAC.
Utilizing avalanche transceivers, the rescue crew positioned and recovered the sufferer’s physique. Deputy Arlan Bennett of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Workplace confirmed the fatality however couldn’t present particulars on the sufferer’s actions main as much as the avalanche.
Simply three days prior, on Saturday, an overdue hiker from Canada was killed by an avalanche in close by Millcreek Canyon. His physique was recovered on Tuesday, the identical day because the Little Cottonwood Canyon incident.
Since Friday, the Wasatch Mountain backcountry, together with the Cottonwood canyons, has been below a excessive avalanche warning. The UAC attributes the elevated danger to a harmful mixture of heavy, water-laden new snow on a weak, pre-existing snow layer. An Alta monitoring web site has recorded over three toes of recent snow since Christmas Day, mirroring situations all through the Cottonwood canyons. Since December twenty seventh, 58 backcountry avalanches have been reported to the Utah Avalanche Heart from the Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden mountains. Of those, 41 occurred within the Salt Lake space alone. Many had been triggered remotely or from a distance, failing a number of toes deep and over a thousand toes large. One instance is a skier remotely triggering a 2-foot-deep, 300-foot-wide delicate slab avalanche on a persistent weak layer whereas skinning 150-200 toes away on low-angle terrain (20-25°) in Mill D North.
Avalanche consultants stress that human-triggered and pure avalanches are doubtless throughout the Wasatch Mountains below these situations. They strongly advise backcountry fans to keep away from slopes steeper than 30 levels and to train excessive warning in avalanche-prone terrain.
There may be not but a report on the UAC web site.
The fatality is the fourth avalanche-related loss of life of the 2024-25 season in North America.
