At 10:30 p.m. Monday night, Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon went into interlodge, when the town of Alta prohibits outdoor travel of any kind due to high avalanche danger. The Utah Department of Transportation closed State Route 210, the two-lane highway up Little Cottonwood Canyon, due to what they’ve called historic avalanche activity. With high winds and over eight feet of snow in the past four days, the Utah Avalanche Center issued an extreme avalanche danger earlier in the week, the highest rating on the forecasting scale.
While the canyon is still closed to travel, the interlodge was lifted on Thursday at around 10 a.m., meaning the record for the longest interlodge has officially been broken. The previous longest interlodge was in February 2020, when the canyon was closed for 52 hours, roughly two and a half days. As of Thursday morning, the shutdown had lasted 60 hours.