SALT LAKE CITY, UT — A 45-year-old Salt Lake City man was killed Sunday, Feb. 22, after triggering a large avalanche while snowbiking in the upper reaches of Caribou Basin in the Snake Creek area above Midway, according to the Utah Avalanche Center and the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office.
Search and rescue teams were dispatched after the avalanche was reported around 4:30 p.m., but unstable conditions limited access to the debris field, and the search was suspended for the night.
Operations resumed about 7 a.m. Monday, Feb. 23, beginning with avalanche mitigation to allow crews to safely enter the slide path. The man was located shortly before 9 a.m. with assistance from Wasatch County Search and Rescue, Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau, and Wasatch Backcountry Rescue K9 teams, the sheriff’s office said.
The Utah Avalanche Center described the slide as a “very large” hard-slab avalanche on a northeast-facing slope at approximately 9,600 feet, with an estimated slope angle of 36 degrees — roughly 3 feet deep, 500 feet wide, and running approximately 900 vertical feet. The rider was caught, carried, and fully buried…