Utah Used Record 1,000+ Artillery Shells For Avalanche Mitigation This Season

Ian Greenwood
·1 min read

Yesterday, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) confirmed what most Salt Lake City skiers were thinking: this was a record-breaking season for avalanche control measures in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Here's the UDOT release with loads of juicy details about the unprecedented road closures and avalanche mitigation efforts.

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Artillery rounds? Yep. UDOT employs howitzers to fire at avalanche-start zones in Little Cottonwood Canyon, triggering slides from a safe distance.

Other avalanche control measures in the slide-prone Little Cottonwood Canyon include road closures, hand-thrown explosives, and remote detonations. Little Cottonwood Canyon, or LCC, accesses Snowbird and Alta via State Route 210.

Both resorts smashed their snowfall records this winter, a historic benchmark that required a historic avalanche safety effort from UDOT.

These are the unprecedented numbers behind this season's explosive avalanche mitigation symphony in Little Cottonwood Canyon:

- 98 avalanches hit State Route 210

- 915 remote avalanche control detonations

- 110 hand-thrown explosive detonations

- 34 full Canyon closures on State Route 210

- 1,480 hours of State Route 210 closures

- 1,072 artillery rounds fired

- Two full ammunition restocks

Whew! These numbers, while shocking, make loads of sense. Utah regularly received absurd amounts of fresh snow this season. And when it's a powder day in LCC, it's time to load up the howitzers.

Shout out to all the hard-working folks at UDOT. They deserve every ounce of praise they get for the avalanche mitigation work they did during the 2022-23 winter.

For a deeper look into Utah's historic winter, view this visual essay from Lee Cohen.

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