Slide Kills Skier at The Canyons

By Bob Berwyn, 12-26-07

	Caption: A photo courtesy of the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center shows the path of the deadly Dec. 23 slide at The Canyons ski area in Summit County, Utah.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a Dec. 23 inbounds avalanche at The Canyons ski area killed one skier and injured another.

According to a report from the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, the slide ran at 11 a.m. on a slope that had been controlled for avalanches the previous day and was subsequently opened for skiing.

The report from the Utah Avalanche Center indicates that the accident involved three people, including a father and son skiing powder in the steep Red Pine chute. The father was able to dig himself out of the slide, but the 11-year-old was completely buried and later uncovered during the search and rescue operation.

The man who died suffered extensive trauma from a blow to the back as the slide carried him down the slope and into some trees.

The slab avalanche was about 60-feet wide, three to five feet deep and ran about 600 vertical feet, failing on a weak layer of faceted sugar snow, according to the avalanche center.

In a follow-up story, the Salt Lake Tribune identified the victim as 30-year-old Jesse Williams, of Grand Junction, Colo. According to the article, Williams was an experienced skier and a member of the ski patrol in the Grand Junction area.

The accident came about a month after a group of California skiers reported a narrow escape from an inbounds slide at Mammoth Mountain, Calif.

Inbounds avalanche fatalities have been exceedingly rare recently. The most recent death before the fatal slide at The Canyons was May 2005 at Arapahoe Basin, in Colorado, when a Boulder man was killed in a wet snow slide on the area’s steep front side.