The Utah Avalanche Center just published their annual report recapping the Winter ’21-’22 season.
I highly recommend every Utah skier, and those that visit Utah to ski, read the report in its entirety. There’s some really great information in there.
You can read the full report from The Utah Avalanche Center here.
Utah had a fantastic year in avalanche safety, all things considered.
The state reported 0 fatalities in 219 human triggered avalanches and 38 unintentionally triggered avalanches. 48 people were caught, 10 were partially buried, and 3 were fully buried.
Not bad at all considering 7 people died during the ’20-’21 season.
Again, I highly encourage everybody read the full report.
Please stay out there, friends, and check out the quick letters from Mark Staples, Director Forest Service UAC, and Chad Bracklesberg, Executive Director Non-Profit UAC.
“What a year — Winter started early in much of the state with storms in early October. The spigot then turned off until the end of December. The period from Christmas to the first week of January brought us a series of storms and some of the best riding of the year.
To keep us on our toes we found ourselves in an unprecedented drought through January and February all while the COVID-19 pandemic made a comeback. Luckily, winter returned in March and April. This left us with some dangerous avalanche conditions. See the Season Recap on page 09 for details on the impact this had on our snowpack.
While we were faced with numerous challenges this year, we are also very excited to have had zero avalanche fatalities. This is the third time in five years with no fatalities. This is a sign that the community is making avalanche safety a priority and benefiting from avalanche education and forecasting services offered across the state.
The UAC’s Know Before You Go Program has become the North American standard for teaching avalanche awareness. In January 2021, we kicked off a project in partnership with CAIC, NWAC, NAC, and Av Can to rebuild the entire program and we are on track to launch this October, more details on page 16. The UAC continues to grow our awareness and education programs reaching more people each year.
This year we were excited to introduce two new programs, community transceiver practice and the Backcountry 201 course. You can learn more about these 2 programs on page 12-14. The UAC is here to serve all users in the backcountry and we could not exist without this amazing community.
We would like to thank everyone for their generous support in making the UAC one of the best avalanche centers in the world. We look forward to a long list of summer projects to meet the challenges of next winter and help everyone stay on top of The Greatest Snow on Earth.®”
