Accident: Mineral Fork

Two snowshoers were reported as overdue when they failed to return from a walk up Mineral Fork on Saturday, December 11th. Victim are Bruce Quint, 59, and Melvin Dennis, 42, both from Salt Lake City.

Saturday night, two skiers from Salt Lake Country Search and Rescue followed snowshoe tracks to the base of a large headwall at the upper end of Mineral Fork where the tracks disappear under fresh avalanche debris and did not appear again on the other side. The two snowshoers were the first people to travel up Mineral Fork after the large storm, which ended two days earlier. Searchers could find no beacon signals in the debris, nor visual clues. Neither of the victims wore beacons. In consultation with several avalanche experts, including one who flew over the area in a helicopter that night, they decided that conditions were too dangerous to bring in a larger team of searchers that night.

On Sunday morning personnel from Wasatch Powderbird Guides controlled the area with explosives, which triggered widespread avalanches in remainder of the canyon as well as hang fire above the accident site. They flew teams of rescuers to the site including Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue, Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, a volunteer group of ski area personnel operating under the Salt Lake County Sheriff. The helicopter was from Utah Highway Patrol. They searched the area using trained avalanche rescue dogs and probed areas where the dogs indicated interest. At 11:30, they found Melvin Dennis buried about four feet deep and more-or-less in line with the tracks which entered the debris. They found the second victim Bruce Quint, on Monday, December 13, 2004 around 10:00 am about 25 yards uphill from the first victim and buried over eight feet deep. Both victims appeared to have been simply pushed over by the debris and buried without being tumbled and were probably buried fairly near their initial positions.

PHOTOS: See Photos.

The same day as the above accident, two snowshoers, Bruce Quint, 59, and Melvin Dennis, 37, failed to return from a day of training for a mountaineering expedition that next spring. Their car was located at Mineral Fork a sub-drainage of Big Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City and that night, volunteers from Wasatch Backcountry Rescue followed their tracks several miles up the bottom of Mineral Fork and the tracks ended in fresh avalanche debris in the bottom of the valley. Although there is no way to know if they triggered the avalanche, our investigation found that the snowpack was extremely fragile and we assume that they most likely triggered the avalanche from the bottom.

The avalanche was a large, hard slab several feet deep and several hundred yards wide, but the dimensions were difficult to determine since rescuers used helicopter-delivered explosives the next morning to bring down extensive lingering avalanche hazard before they could safely begin their search. Unfortunately, neither victim was wearing an avalanche beacon, further complicating the recovery. Rescuers, used avalanche dogs and probes, and found the two buried in the valley bottom, 25 yards apart underneath 4' and 8' of snow.

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