A crew hired by the Salt Lake Climbers Alliance had been laboring in the hot sun for hours this summer when they suddenly came across a bomb.
“We were in the Wasatch, so we wondered if it was an avalanche bomb, because those are found every now and again,” said Julia Geisler, the executive director for the local nonprofit climbing organization.
“But it definitely wasn’t that,” she said.
The crew had stumbled upon the old munition, which could date back to World War II, while working to reroute an unsustainable trail up to Lone Peak Cirque, an alpine climbing destination near Draper.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
They called authorities on June 28 to report their alarming discovery. Later that afternoon, the Utah National Guard came to the site and removed the mortar.
The National Guard said that the munition had likely been buried there for over about 30 years. The bomb’s timing had expired, but the powder within it did not ignite, meaning that it never exploded.
Its origin remains a mystery. Officials with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality have yet to determine where the munition came from and are working with the Department of Defense and the National Guard to do so.
There are many historic munition sites across the state, according to Katie Crane, who oversees the Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s Military Munitions Response Program. She said bombs from testing and training exercises decades ago can still be found on public or private land.
On one of the sites that the Military Munitions Response Program oversees, there was an 8 to 10% undetonated munition rate, meaning that 8 to 10% of the munitions on that site still had the potential to explode.
If you ever come across a munition, Crane identified three steps to take: recognize, retreat and report.
Recognize that the item may be an explosive munition
Retreat from the munition without touching it.
Report its location to authorities.
Do not bring a mortar to a police station yourself; doing so can result in shutting down entire city blocks out of an abundance of caution, since the munition could still be live.
“Even if you’re not totally sure if it’s a munition, but you think it might be, report it,” Crane said.
