Avalanche deaths up among ranks of experienced skiers

Though textbook conditions for avalanches have had forecasters throughout the Mountain West ramping up warnings for backcountry travelers, close calls and fatal accidents continue to mount.

So far, 17 skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers have been killed with more than two months remaining in one of the most avalanche-prone seasons in memory. And although that number projects only marginally higher than the national average of 28.8 deaths a year over the last decade, increasingly those who put themselves in harm's way seem not to be careless novices but, rather, experts pushing the limits of safety.

Among the victims in Washington was Jim Jack, the longtime head judge of the Freeskiing World Tour, who was killed along with two other experienced backcountry skiers near the Stevens Pass ski area. Their party of 13, all of whom were buried in snow to some degree, included professional skiers and ski journalists.

"It's mostly the hardcore riders, people who know better," Bruce Tremper, director of the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, said recently of the emerging trend of experts testing their skills against the backcountry, no matter the conditions. "In the past, we felt once you're in the hardcore category, you're more low risk for us. But now with the films and the videos, everybody is pushing it to the extreme."

Indeed, skill, experience and daring are often not enough to avoid becoming a statistic. In recent days, two backcountry riders died in avalanches in southern Colorado -- a well-equipped solo snowboarder was killed in the lower Bear Creek near the Telluride ski resort on Feb. 13, and an off-duty ski patroller from the Keystone ski resort died when all three skiers in his party were caught in a slide near Wolf Creek Pass on Thursday.

One forecaster, Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said Sunday night that the six deaths inside of a week have "made me want to expand my margin of error."

"When you go look at accidents where people die, you see that the difference between living and dying is a razor-thin margin," Greene said, adding: "Part of that is seeing how a bad bounce is the difference between going home and laughing about it with your friends and going home in a body bag. That's something I struggle with because I feel like it's a really invaluable lesson, but I'm not sure how to get it across. It's like, just tweak your behavior a little bit and you can turn that bad bounce into an OK one."

Unusual conditions in the snow cover of the Mountain West -- with scant snowfall leading to a shallow snowpack that features a thick layer of weak-faceted grains, known as depth hoar, at the bottom -- have created a kind of "perfect storm" for avalanches, one veteran Colorado ski patroller said, something not seen here in 35 years.

In the United States this winter, avalanches have claimed the lives of six people in Colorado (four skiers, a snowboarder and a snowmobiler), three in Utah (two snowboarders and a snowmobiler), three in Montana (two snowmobilers and a skier), one in Wyoming (a skier) and the four on Sunday in Washington (three skiers and a snowboarder). In Canada, there have been four deaths, all in British Columbia.

Reports and videos of mountainsides crashing down on skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers abound on the Internet, including over the weekend in Colorado despite a strongly worded "special alert." Avalanche professionals say, grimly, that they expect the accidents to continue -- along with the dicey conditions.

"It's important to remember that we're dealing with an outlier year," Greene said. "An unusual year leads to unusual avalanches. Still, you're seeing people engaging in very risky behavior in places where that behavior is concentrated."

Greene cited easy-access backcountry zones adjacent to ski areas, like the East Vail Chutes and Bear Creek off Telluride -- places where lots of people ski and ride and, if history serves as a guide, a few people die.

To a degree, Coloradans are accustomed to fragile and dangerous snowpacks like this season's. Pitkin County, with Aspen as the county seat, is the deadliest county for avalanches and Colorado is the deadliest state. But this year, similar poorly structured snowpacks extend to Utah, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. In Washington, conditions are thought to be better -- still, with 30-plus inches of new snow in recent days, the local avalanche forecast for Steven's Pass called for high danger on Sunday at elevations above 5,000 feet.

"This year is extremely unusual for us," said Tremper, who has directed Utah's avalanche center since 1986 and is the author of the book "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain." "Utah is famous for its powder and lots of it, and this year, it's just not that way.

"We're discovering the hard way that a lot of people have just never experienced a depth hoar snowpack. With our last avalanche cycle, even though we had warnings in effect that went on for 10 days and we're saying over and over that this is dangerous, and it's going to remain dangerous and it's just a whole different animal -- I think there were a lot of people that didn't believe us. But they do now."

It is the sort of winter when even experienced backcountry riders may have no experience with the conditions.

Meesh Hytner, a 21-year-old professional snowboarder from Breckenridge, Colo., recently survived a deep slab avalanche during an unsanctioned backcountry contest near Montezuma, Colo. She credited her survival to an airbag that she deployed that kept her at the top of the cascading snow. A video of Hytner in the Jan. 25 avalanche has been viewed nearly 700,000 times and spurred a lot of discussion online -- a lot of it critical of her decision-making that day.

"It's kind of detrimental to my mental health," she said of the fallout online. "But I do want to make sure people don't make the same mistake I did."

Hytner continued: "I've always been the type of person to touch the stove to make sure it's hot. And I did that. But it's not fun. Avalanches are horrible. The backcountry is just not a good place to be; just find something else to do. I'm writing this year off. I don't know how many people have to die before people get that."

Dale Atkins, a former Colorado ski patroller and state avalanche forecaster and the president of the American Avalanche Association, echoed Hytner's sentiment.

"Our big problem is snow is white -- it all looks the same," he said. "And now that it's finally looking winter-like, you want to get out and start skiing stuff. But if avalanche courses teach us the rules, nature teaches us the exceptions. And this is a winter to dial it back, watch and learn from it -- it's not the winter to go charging out into the sidecountry or backcountry."

All the things forecasters are talking about in avalanche reports -- naturally occurring cracking, collapsing, "whoompfing" and the avalanching of the snowpack under the weight of skiers or riders -- were evident during a recent backcountry ski tour above the town of Independence, east of Aspen. Brian McCall, one of 16 Colorado Avalanche Information Center forecasters, triggered collapsing and cracking down through the entire depth of the snow cover from as far away as 300 feet in moderately sloped dark timber.

McCall performed stability tests in a snowpit at about 11,300 feet -- the snow was 78 centimeters deep, with depth hoar and facets making up about the bottom third of it. Test results indicated highly reactive, unstable snow -- no real surprise. Later, while touring farther up the glade, one slope fractured into multiple concentric cracks. McCall said if the slope was a few degrees steeper it would have been sliding away.

"Really spooky results, but similar to what we've seen all winter here," he said. "It confirms what we were thinking."

If there is an upside to the dire conditions, it is that avalanche professionals are learning more every day they are out in the field.

"It's like gold," said Greene, of the Colorado avalanche center. "The days you go out and everything you touch is cracking or collapsing or avalanching are the days you learn the most. That's precious experience that you can't replicate any other way."