"Arctic" doesn't have to mean the actual Arctic Circle — here it's a color palette applied to a distinctly Utah hazard: avalanche paths in Little Cottonwood Canyon, one of the most avalanche-prone corridors in the Wasatch.
Real risk, rendered for readability
Built as a 3D scene in ArcGIS Pro 3.4 using avalanche-path data from the Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC) alongside Esri's terrain hillshade service, the cool purple-and-blue palette isn't just aesthetic — it maps directly to real risk zones that skiers, hikers, and canyon residents contend with every winter as snow builds on the steep canyon walls.
Beauty and hazard, together
Part of what makes avalanche terrain worth mapping is that it's both of those things at once: striking mountain geography and a genuine safety concern. A map that leans into that instead of flattening it into a plain hazard overlay does more to connect people to the landscape that actually affects them.
Created for the “Arctic” theme of the 2024 #30DayMapChallenge, using avalanche path data from the Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC) and Esri terrain hillshade services.