[PHOTOS] Solo Snowboarder Killed in Big Cottonwood Canyon, UT, Avalanche Was Buried Under 20-Feet of Snow

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 in the Davenport Hill area north of the ridge separating Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon, east of Salt Lake City.

The crown was two feet deep, 300 feet wide, and ran for 400 vertical feet. The man was found beneath 20 feet of snow.

“Sometime on the morning of December 31, 2024 a solo splitboarder dropped into north facing Davenport Hill, in the Silver Fork Drainage of Big Cottonwood Canyon. He triggered an avalanche which subsequently caught, buried, and killed him. Another party lapping the terrain to the south in Little Cottonwood Canyon noticed a single track into fresh avalanche debris on one of their laps and called Alta Central.

Search and rescue teams from AirMed, DPS, Utah Department of Transportation, Salt Lake Search and Rescue, Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, Alta Ski Area, and Utah Avalanche Center responded, found the individual with an avalanche transceiver and worked together to excavate the individual. He was buried approximately 20 feet (6 meters) from the surface.

We will collect information and update a full accident report soon.

Our condolences go out to to the victim’s family and friends, as well as those affected by this tragedy.”

– Utah Avalanche Center preliminary report

 

The Utah Avalanche Center  (UAC) reported that the victim, whose identity remains undisclosed, was traveling alone on a splitboard in the Silver Fork area when the avalanche struck. The exact timing of the event is uncertain, but it’s believed to have happened Tuesday morning.

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A skier from another party noticed a single track leading into a recent avalanche debris field and alerted Alta Central. This triggered a multi-agency rescue team response, including the Department of Public Safety, AirMed, Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, Salt Lake County Search and Rescue, Utah Department of Transportation, and the UAC.

Using avalanche transceivers, the rescue team located and recovered the victim’s body. Deputy Arlan Bennett of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the fatality but could not provide details on the victim’s activities leading up to the avalanche.

Just three days prior, on Saturday, an overdue hiker from Canada was killed by an avalanche in nearby Millcreek Canyon. His body was recovered on Tuesday, the same day as the Little Cottonwood Canyon incident.

Since Friday, the Wasatch Mountain backcountry, including the Cottonwood Canyons, has been under a high avalanche warning. The UAC attributes the increased risk to a dangerous combination of heavy, water-laden new snow on a weak, pre-existing snow layer. An Alta monitoring site has recorded over three feet of fresh snow since Christmas Day, mirroring conditions throughout the Cottonwood canyons. Since December 27th, 58 backcountry avalanches have been reported to the Utah Avalanche Center from the Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden mountains. Of these, 41 occurred in the Salt Lake area alone. Many were triggered remotely or from a distance, failing multiple feet deep and over a thousand feet wide. One example is a skier remotely triggering a 2-foot-deep, 300-foot-wide soft slab avalanche on a persistent weak layer while skinning 150-200 feet away on low-angle terrain (20-25°) in Mill D North.

Avalanche experts stress that human-triggered and natural avalanches are likely across the Wasatch Mountains under these conditions. They strongly advise backcountry enthusiasts to avoid slopes steeper than 30 degrees and to exercise extreme caution in avalanche-prone terrain.

The fatality is the fourth avalanche-related death of the 2024-25 season in North America.

This article was edited at 04:30 a.m. PST on Thursday, January 2, 2025, to add further info and photos from the UAC.