SANDY, Utah — Little Cottonwood Canyon has posed never-before-seen risks to crews this week.
“It just feels kind of unimaginable really,” said Utah Department of Transportation avalanche program manager Steven Clark.
READ: Cottonwood Canyons to close for several hours each day this coming week
Clark grew up in Utah, and said this snowpack takes him back to stories he heard about the record-breaking winter of 1983.
“You know, I read a lot of that history and to sort of realize about halfway through the winter that we were headed in this direction... no one on this crew had really ever personally experienced, only really have read about,” said Clark.
Crews and experts are working to predict avalanches and slides, and to clear the road at Little Cottonwood in unprecedented conditions.
READ: Little Cottonwood Canyon briefly opened for first time in days
“That's what's been so challenging... We don't have personal experience to go off of when we're working up here,” said Clark.
Clark and other avalanche workers took a media team up the canyon Thursday to see the aftermath of one of more than thirty slides they’ve been clearing in the canyon.
One in Lisa Falls was 100 yards wide and 30 feet deep, and took crews 4 hours to clear the road.
“Avalanche danger is the real deal,” said Jake Brown, the UDOT Region 2 South Area supervisor. “The slide paths are becoming so big. They're not following their natural route anymore. They’re taking out more. It’s eating more.”
Brown said the slides and avalanches just keep coming.
“You're talking thousands of tons of snow that we have to move off to the side of the road to get it open,” he said.
Crew members are starting work at 4 a.m. and some days not ending until 8 p.m. in dangerous conditions — even losing equipment to the snow.
“We had a loader that's about 14 feet tall, completely buried all the way to the roof,” said Brown.
Brown said this is just the beginning of what could be an intense spring.
"This is April, and we have 12-foot-high road banks in Lower Canyon. That's amazing,” said Brown. “We are going to have some flooding issues and pothole issues, and we might have some... road issues with rivers. So we'll see what happens."
