Avalanche: Hidden Canyon

The Human Factor:

The group of six fit a certain profile: highly athletic, young, aggressive riders with boarding skills that far outweigh their avalanche skills. Only one had taken any sort of avalanche class, and none were wearing or carrying any rescue gear. Interviews with most of them led me to conclude that none of them had called the avalanche hotline or looked at the Utah Avalanche Center’s website that day. One had a brother who had suffered massive injuries and been life-flighted from the Snowbasin backcountry from an avalanche incident a couple years before.

Epilogue:

I went in to do the investigation with the help of some Brighton ski patrollers, who promptly had the access gate into the area closed to skier traffic until we were out ‘down and clear’. Not more than a couple hours after we were gone, two other large avalanches were triggered in the area that completely engulfed the terrain in which we’d been.

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Six snowboarders, all men in their mid-twenties, entered the Hidden Canyon side-country looking for fresh powder. After a quick scout, the first snowboarder center-punched a steep chute without incident, and, per good protocol, got out of the way at the bottom. The next snowboarder made two turns before triggering the hard slab that propagated 30’ above him, engulfing him and one of companions above. Both men rode the wave 700’ down the chute, with the second man sustaining an orbital fracture, a hairline jaw fracture and numerous facial lacerations and abrasions. Neither was deeply buried and the entire party was able to walk back out to the road.