Avalanche kills snowboarder on Kessler Peak
An avalanche claimed the second fatality of the 2011/12 winter season when a snowboarder triggered a deep slab on the west side of Kessler Peak in Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Alecsander Barton, a 25-year-old man living in Salt Lake City, was backcountry touring on the morning of January 28 with two other people. The party skinned up the Argenta slidepath on the north side of Kessler Peak, and descended into Mineral Fork in an area called Little Giant. According to the Utah Avalanche Center, Barton was the first person to drop in. He immediately triggered a two-three foot deep hard slab that swept him over 2-thousand feet down the mountain through rough, rocky terrain. He came to rest at the bottom of the slide where he was completely buried.
The slide path of the Kessler Peak avalanche that killed a snowboarder. (Image: Utah Avalanche Center)
In a Unified Police press release, the other members in the touring party skied down to Barton and used their avalanche beacons to locate their friend and call for help. The Wasatch Powder Birds assisted in the rescue and flew two members of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue to the scene. When they arrived, rescuers found Burton had deceased. Everyone was then flown away from the accident site to the Wasatch Powder Birds headquarters at Snowbird.
According to UPD, Barton is originally from Michigan, but was now living in the Salt Lake area.
The avalanche danger rating for the day was at level three, or “considerable” which means that conditions were very dangerous in the Wasatch backcountry where steep, west to north and southeast facing slopes should have been avoided.
You can read the preliminary accident report at the Utah Avalanche Center.
See aerial footage of the avalanche taken from KSL’s Chopper 5:
