“If there’s a Mecca for avalanche control, it’s Little Cottonwood,” said Doug Abromeit, the director of the United States Forest Service National Avalanche Center. “It’s kind of the birthplace for the avalanche program of the United States.”

What now confounds resort officials and highway managers is that many of the alternatives to artillery are loaded with consequences, too. Newer types of weapons, of which the Army has plenty on hand, shoot explosives farther than the current gun system does, elevating the risk of overshooting targets. Snow sheds and tunnels to cover the highway are hugely expensive, and snow fences that restrict snow on high slopes raise aesthetic and environmental issues.

Some proposals might even backfire and worsen avalanche risks. Alta is considering, for example, building a new chairlift on a slide-prone area called Flagstaff Mountain. Demolition experts could then plant hand charges, the preferred method in most resorts, and skiers using the lift would compact the snow, reducing its propensity to slide.

But Flagstaff Mountain is also considered a prime gateway to backcountry ski areas outside the resort boundary and not patrolled by anyone. More skiers on one side of the mountain packing down the snow, avalanche experts said, would probably mean more people on the other, venturing into areas where they could be in more avalanche danger than ever.

Backcountry skiing and snowmobiling have been the fastest-growing categories in avalanche deaths in recent years, especially last year, when 36 people died nationwide, the worst year since 1950. Twenty-four people have died so far this winter in avalanches around the West.

Image Liam Fitzgerald used an inclinometer on Wednesday to measure a distant slope opposite the recoilless rifle above the ski town. Credit... Brian Nicholson for The New York Times

“You would quite likely have a lot of people venturing out there who shouldn’t,” said Liam Fitzgerald, who leads the Highway Avalanche Safety Program at the Utah Department of Transportation. “No one has come up with how we are going to deal with that issue.”