Spring Avalanches in Little Cottonwood Canyon 2023
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- On Monday April 3rd, 2023 until Wednesday April 5th, Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah received over 60 inches of snow. The avalanche danger got so bad, they closed the road from the Salt Lake valley to Snowbird and Alta on Monday and didn’t open until Friday morning.
Saturday morning on April 8th, they opened the road for 4 hours to allow employees and a few crazy skiers to get up to the ski areas. The Utah Department of Transportation or UDOT then closed the road at 9am until 7pm that evening. They had an initial limit of 2000 cars for the day but only 500 bothered to chance the dangerous conditions.
This is a video of the drive up to Alta. If you look carefully you will notice 15 of the 18 different avalanches that crossed the road over a 7-mile journey. Some of the avalanches appear so wide you cannot tell if it is one or multiple slides.
Music: bensound.com
License code: X9AO3SFZCOXRYNKT
Video ©Copyright 2023 Matthew Bennett
What a wild amount of snow!
Yes, there is. If it had stayed cold, they wouldn't need to close the canyon but the quick warm-up is what is creating insane avalanche danger.
was the snow good that day?
Great but not amazing. It had been 2 days since the snow stopped falling and so the fresh snow settled quite a bit. They also allowed people stuck up at the resorts to ski for a couple of hours on Thursday and Friday so you didn't have powder everywhere. Then there was a huge crust about halfway down the Mountain. Once it got warm in the afternoon, the crust became soft and skied very well.
How long do you think this will be affecting the area? hoping to come out in a week or so for some spring skiing. Still worth it?
That is a good question. The canyon is closed this week and not expected to open until Saturday. My hope is that the cold front moving through will stabilize the snow and we can get back to skiing daily. There is still a 206-inch base at Alta and so we should be able to ski for a long time. At least at Snowbird as Alta will close after the 23rd of April.