We study the local geometry of the three-dimensional uniform spanning tree and its connection with the Abelian sandpile model. We obtain sharp tail exponents, up to subpolynomial errors, for the past of the origin in the three-dimensional UST and for the $0$-tree of the $0$-wired uniform spanning forest. As a principal application, we prove the corresponding three-dimensional Abelian sandpile avalanche exponents: the avalanche-cluster radius has tail exponent $1$, while both the avalanche-cluster size and the total number of topplings have tail exponent $1/3$. These results identify the leading power-law behaviour of three-dimensional sandpile avalanches and improve previously known bounds.