8 dead in Western avalanches so far this winter

Mountain adventurers beware: Avalanche danger is high around the West, with slides up to 10 feet tall and a half-mile wide killing eight people already this year. The latest fatality was a skier who died in northern Utah on Sunday when a slab of snow broke away just outside the Snowbasin resort. Avalanche conditions are particularly ripe after last week's storms piled deep, slide-prone layers of heavy snow atop months-old layers of snow that are crystallized and weak. "It's like putting a brick on top of a pile of potato chips," Bruce Tremper, director of the Utah Avalanche Center, said Monday. "It doesn't work. It can't hold the weight."...read more