Observer Name
Jake Krong
Observation Date
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Avalanche Date
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Days Fork » Banana Days
Location Name or Route
Banana Days
Elevation
10,000'
Aspect
Northeast
Trigger
Natural
Depth
Unknown
Width
40'
Comments
I want to add a few comments to this observation:
Brian explained everything very well. My wife and I were the two skiers in the party. We had skied the same run on Banana Days about 90 minutes before. It was warming up and in hindsight, while we were certainly aware of the large cornices, we perhaps should have not skied that run again. My wife skied first and her plan was to quickly ski through the chute and out onto the wide apron. I was watching from a safe spot. She was about 200' down when I saw the cornice crack. I yelled at her and she was able to quickly cut a straight line to her right and out of harm's way. Fortunately the cornice did not trigger any type of slab. I quickly skied to the last place I saw her and then heard her yelling from below that she was OK. I followed her tracks to the right.
The lesson here for us was a reminder that cornices can go at any time, but they are especially scary when the sun is beating down.
Comments
From another party-
Remotely triggered slide on banana belt observed from the skin track up chicken shit ridge. The first skier was about 150-200' down banana belt and exiting the choke of the chute just below a lot of cliff bands. ~10,000ft, NE facing. The ridge above was heavily corniced above the cliffs. Skier was able to exit to their right to avoid the slide which broke above them, the second skier in the party descended the same path quickly after and appeared to be situated on the ridge further to skiers right of the cornice failure at the time of the slide. Both skiers were able to ski down unharmed. After assessing the terrain and situation as best we could from our vantage point, we determined it was most likely a remote trigger of a cornice on the ridge which then fell through the cliffs and into the run, taking a decent amount of snow from the cliffs with it. Slide was about 40' wide and ran about 300' vertically. The sun was out in force at the time of the incident (about 12:15pm). Although the slope was mostly shaded, the cornices on the ridge were getting hit pretty hard in the sun. The slide did not appear to have been a cohesive slab, but definitely did have enough volume from the cornice and cliff face to have taken a person for quite a ride, potentially through some trees.
