He quickly found others and dug them out from under the snow.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake County Search and Rescue members await the Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter team to arrive at Mill Creek Canyon on Sunday, February 7, 2021 to recover the bodies of four skiers who perished in an avalanche.
Saturday’s avalanche that took the lives of four backcountry skiers in Utah could have been even more deadly, but to the quick rescue of a skier who clung to a tree to escape the slide that dragged seven others.
The debris completely buried six skiers and partially buried a seventh. The only skier not trapped went in search of his buried companions. Using a transceiver, this skier, who has not been officially identified, quickly found signals emitted by beacons carried by the buried skiers and dug into two that were trapped under 3 to 5 feet of snow, according to forecaster Drew Hardesty.
“He … grabbed a tree and held on for his life, while the avalanche engulfed him and buried everyone,” Hardesty said. “And in that moment, to watch this happen and then have the resources to do the [beacon] signals and not one but two full and deep funerals and two lives saving is amazing. “
Wilson Glade is located in the headwaters of Mill Creek Canyon below the Big Cottonwood Canyon canyon in the heart of the Wasatch Mountains ski area, famous for its fine snow on easily accessible alpine terrain.
According to official reports, a group of five skiers entered Wilson Glade from Big Cottonwood, while a group of three entered Mill Creek from below. At the time of the avalanche, both groups were on the rise when the slide was “remotely activated,” said forecaster Nikki Champion.
The skier who managed not to get trapped by the slide toured in the group of five.
In most backcountry avalanches, a skier or snowmobile activates the slide while driving or skiing in the start zone. That doesn’t seem to be the case in what has been Utah’s deadliest avalanche since 1992.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Saturday’s slide matched those characteristics, with the exception of the slope angle. This avalanche originated on a relatively tame slope of 31 degrees, likely evidence that conditions that day were exceptionally unstable.
Due to Utah’s shallow pockets of snow, the recent round of midwinter storms has sparked extreme avalanche danger as the new dense snow accumulates on what forecasters call “persistent faint layers” ready to release.
When skiing on avalanche-prone slopes, backcountry skiers are taught to keep enough distance from each other to minimize the chances of more than one being caught if the snowy slope gives way. That way, if someone is completely buried, their companions can save them.
This principle generally works while parties are skiing down a slope. It’s rare for more than one skier to get caught on most of the water slides in Utah, but Saturday’s massive avalanche occurred as these groups took off, presumably in a single row through a “skin track,” Hardesty said. As a result, all eight skiers were in the path of the slide at the same time, even though the two groups were quite far apart. Two skiers in each group survived.
“Multiple-casualty avalanches are uncommon when looking at our avalanche accidents since 1940. They do happen, but they are rare,” Hardesty said. “I would say that this avalanche accident broke the trend by many metrics and standards as our average number of accidents in the last 30 years has decreased either flat or slightly – despite exploding use of the hinterland.”
Avalanches have claimed 21 lives in the US this season, 15 in the past week alone, putting this winter on track to be among the deadliest on record. And winter is barely half over.