Anchorage Daily News

As the rain fell on Portage Friday and the mountains thundered high above, Chugach National Forest avalanche ranger Carl Skustad wondered what disaster the weekend might bring.

Alaska is the national leader in death by avalanche. About a quarter of all American avalanche fatalities happen in the 49th state.

"Hopefully, I don't get any calls tomorrow," Skustad said by telephone from his Girdwood office late in the day.

He had just returned from surveying snow conditions in Turnagain Pass. Twelve to 20 inches of wet, heavy snow had fallen there, piling onto the several feet already on the ground. In some places, the new, water-laden snow alone was enough to trigger avalanches.

On Sunburst Mountain, a popular attraction for telemark skiers and snowboarders, a slide nearly 500 feet wide ripped out and roared 1,000 feet downhill.

"It went to the ground," Skustad said. "So that would probably be 4 or 5 feet deep."

By the time the snow from a slide like that piles up at the bottom of the mountain, it is far deeper and often the consistency of fresh cement. You do not want to get caught in an avalanche like this.

Even if you're wearing an avalanche beacon, and even if your friends are good enough at using their beacons to locate you quickly, they still might not be able to dig you out before you die -- if you aren't already dead from injuries suffered as the avalanche tumbled you downhill.

Turnagain Pass has a bad avalanche history. A half-mile-long wall of snow let go along the pass's northern edge in March 1999. Dozens of snowmachiners out riding that day were swept up in it. Some escaped unscathed. Some were buried but dug themselves out.

Six didn't make it. It took days to find some of the bodies after the worst avalanche accident in modern Alaska history.

Snowmachining for this winter's season began in the pass only this week. The pass is one of the few areas near Anchorage with enough snow to allow people to participate in the popular motorsport activity. This will be the first weekend they can ride.

Skustad can only hope people are careful.

"You've got to just give this stuff a little bit of a break to set up," he said. "It will take a little time, but it will settle up. (Now) all it really needs is a human trigger."

Already this week, the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center (www.cnfaic.org) is reporting a couple of skiers caught in slides they or their friends triggered.

In one case on Thursday, a skier in the Fresno Creek area near Summit Lake on the Kenai Peninsula was buried waist deep. In the other incident, also on Thursday, a skier took a 200- to 300-foot tumble down the south side of the South Fork Eagle River valley atop a shifting wall of snow. He was able to stop himself while still atop the snow.

As with so many avalanche incidents, these luckily ended with no one buried, said Blaine Smith of the Alaska Avalanche School (www.alaskaavalanche.com). Like Skustad, Smith was watching the weather on Friday, thinking about the snow and fearing for the worst on the weekend.

"It's pretty predictable somebody is going to get in trouble," he said. "Hopefully they only get a ride out of it."

Many do. Some don't, especially here.

From the winter of 1995/96 to the winter of 2004/05 (the latest period for which comparative figures are readily available), 55 people died in avalanches in Alaska. Colorado came in second with 54. Other states trailed far behind.

But the comparison between Alaska and Colorado is somewhat misleading. Colorado has a population of nearly 5 million. Its largest city -- Denver -- has a population nearly that of the entire state of Alaska. Thus, the per capita avalanche death rate in Colorado is a fraction of that in Alaska.

Per capita, winter recreationists in Alaska have about an eight-times-greater chance of dying in an avalanche than those in Colorado.

Too often, avalanche authorities say, people die because they make bad decisions. The recent slide at Fresno Creek was a classic in that regard, Skustad said. The skiers involved reported hearing the snow "whomping'' beneath them -- a sure sign that the snowpack is weak and coming apart -- and yet they kept going until they got into a spot where the obviously failing snow was on a mountainside steep enough that it slid.

"I don't understand," Skustad said.

The avalanche experts can only advise people to use their heads.

If you're snowmachining in an area where natural avalanches are coming down, if you see cracks opening in the snow pack when you're skiing, if you hear the snow whomping beneath you while you're snowshoeing, they say, stay well away from slopes greater than 25 degrees and from avalanche run-out areas.

Twenty-five degrees is, generally, the steepest slope you will see on a beginner's hill at a maintained ski area. Avalanche run-outs are usually well marked by broken vegetation and torn-down trees where past avalanches have ripped through the forest.

If you're uncomfortable with avalanche assessment, avoid the mountainous backcountry altogether. Ride your snowmachine in the flatlands of the Susitna River valley, or hit the slopes at ski areas where avalanche conditions are kept under control with the liberal use of high explosives.

"Alyeska (Resort) got pretty big results this morning with their artillery," Skustad noted. Alyeska does a lot of blasting to keep the resort safe. It long ago learned how dangerous avalanches can be. A 1973 slide took out the resort's main chairlift and came close to taking out the hotel as well.

The resort has used heavy artillery to engage in a war with Mother Nature every winter since.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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