Separate avalanches in the Wasatch Mountains Sunday claimed the life of one woman at Snowbird resort and injured a man near Square Top peak near The Canyons.
The afternoon slide in Little Cottonwood Canyon occurred within Snowbird boundaries near Mount Baldy at roughly 10,500 feet, Utah Avalanche Center Director Bruce Tremper said. “It’s very rare to have an inbounds fatality, and we’ve had two in a row, which is very unusual,” said Tremper, referring to a fatal inbounds avalanche at The Canyons in December 2007. Five people in Utah have died in avalanches within boundaries at ski resorts since 1950, he explained. “In that same time period 61 people have been killed by lighting Ten times more Utahns are killed by lightning than are killed by inbounds avalanches,” Tremper said.
Meanwhile, an avalanche Sunday in the Snyderville Basin was triggered above Red Pine Lake at roughly 2:45 p.m., the authorities said. “It was only a matter of probably five minutes, 10 minutes at the most, from when I got the initial call to when they called back and said they had gotten him out,” Summit County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Steve Stokes said.
The man trapped in the slide was in the backcountry with about four other people, he said, not sure whether the group was equipped with rescue equipment.
The five people who were skiing in the backcountry live in western Summit County, said avalanche forecaster Grant Helgeson, adding that the man who was trapped is about 21 years old. “One person was caught and carried into trees and injured, and the rest of the folks were able to get him down off the slope to the flat below where rescuers could get to him,” Tremper said. “It sounds like it was a man who triggered the avalanche.”
Ski patrollers from The Canyons were first at the scene, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said.
“He sustained some pretty significant injuries,” Edmunds said about the victim, who is expected to survive after being transported in a medical helicopter.
Monday the Utah Avalanche Center was measuring the slide. “[Sunday] the backcountry was just flooded with people because they were so hungry for powder,” Tremper said. “The main problem is on steep slopes that have wind drifted snow from the strong winds on Friday that were blowing out of the south The people who fell into the pockets of that wind-drifted snow were able to trigger avalanches.”