Avalanche Danger Lurks in Sierra and the West, but Predictions Lag

On a typical winter weekend, a dozen or so back-country skiers and snowboarders head up to “T.J. Bowl”--a sparkling sweep of steep, untracked snow beneath the jagged granite ridgeline of the Sierra Nevada.

When the clouds cleared after one recent storm, the locals who ski “T.J.” looked up to see the slopes had been swept by a huge avalanche that stripped the snow down to the ground and tumbled Volkswagen-sized blocks of ice and frozen snow like dice.

“The only reason people were not skiing at the time was it was a miserable storm,” said area skier and avalanche forecaster Sue Burak. “The next break in weather, people would have hit it. . . . It’s unlikely they would have survived.”

A Vivid Reminder of Danger

The potentially deadly slide just outside this resort town was a vivid reminder that although the technology exists to forecast avalanche danger and warn people before they head for the mountains, the nearest federal avalanche center is two states away in Salt Lake City.

Much of the West is equally unprotected. There are just six federal forecast centers in the United States. The prospects for expansion are slim, even as a boom in winter sports puts more people in harm’s way each year on cross-country skis, snowshoes and snowmobiles.

Avalanches killed people in the United States at a rate of six or eight per winter 1985 to 1990, but the numbers have been climbing, according to the Colorado Avalanche Forecasting Center in Denver. Thirty people were killed in avalanches in the winter of 1995-96, 22 the next winter and 26 last winter. Back-country skiers, snowmobilers and climbers accounted for the most deaths.

Avalanches have claimed nine lives this winter, and three people were missing in snowslides as of Feb. 1.

“It’s absurd that when you’ve got so many people using the back country that funding for forecasting is so thin,” said Peter Metcalf, president of Black Diamond Equipment Ltd., a Salt Lake City-based manufacturer of mountain gear.

Avalanches in the nearby Wasatch Mountains have killed one Black Diamond employee or contract worker each year since the company moved to Utah in 1991.

“You look around each winter and wonder who’s going to be next,” Metcalf said. “It’s hard to go to all these funerals.”

The Salt Lake area has a forecasting center, and there are similar offices in Denver; Seattle; Ketchum, Idaho; Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Bozeman, Mont.

Forecasters say that the existing centers are understaffed and underfunded--and huge areas of prime recreational country across the West aren’t covered at all.

For example, the west side of Yellowstone National Park gets enough snowmobile traffic to warrant a forecast center, said Doug Abromeit, a Forest Service employee at the Ketchum center who coordinates government funding for avalanche forecasting. There are no federal centers in Alaska, Oregon, Nevada and California.

“People who ski in the back country in California, they’re on their own,” Abromeit said.

There are more people than ever on their own in the back country as baby boomers and their children flock to the mountains from the Rockies to the Sierra and Cascades to play and live.

Condos and townhouses are sprouting on steep, snow-laden slopes. Ski resorts tend their own slopes, but not the adjacent back country.

More and more cross-country skiers are venturing off groomed tracks into the forest. Increasingly powerful snowmobiles are carrying people deeper into the wilderness. And advances in snowshoe design are making avalanche country accessible to adventurers with little or no outdoor experience.

Sales of back-country equipment jumped 361% last year from the winter before, according to SnowSports Industries America.

At the avalanche centers, forecasters study weather reports, analyze snowfall data and ski into the back country to dig pits in the snow to gauge its stability. They rate avalanche danger on a five-step scale from “low” to “extreme,” and get the information out through local media, recorded telephone hot lines, faxes and the Internet.

Last winter the Utah center had 125,000 calls to its recorded avalanche advisory hot line and 215,000 Internet hits and e-mail inquiries. The Bozeman center went from putting out 4,000 advisories in the 1990-91 season to more than 50,000 last winter.

Much of the recreational territory in the West is on Forest Service land. Forecasters say the agency funded avalanche research and ran forecasting centers across the region until the early 1980s. But the service pulled out most of its funding around the middle of the decade, the forecasters said.

The Forest Service was unable to provide information on how much it budgeted for avalanche forecasting, either this year or in earlier years, said Denny Bschor, director of recreation for the service in Washington.

An Associated Press tally of information provided by the existing centers found the Forest Service provided less than half the $832,000 spent on forecasting in the winter of 1997-98. The main components: $406,000 from state and local governments, $188,000 from the Forest Service, $44,000 from the ski industry and $139,000 in donations.

Bschor said it was Forest Service policy to shift funding responsibility to other “partners”--states, local governments and private industry.

That means the 30 forecasters nationwide--most of them part-time or seasonal hires--spend much of their time scrambling for funding. They go to state and county governments, to highway departments worried about drivers on vulnerable mountain roads, to ski manufacturers, to volunteer support groups.

Typical is the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Montana. Office space is provided by the Forest Service, which pays $32,000 a year for the director’s salary. There were $24,000 in grants and donations from outdoor industry and recreation groups, two snowmobiles borrowed from Yellowstone National Park, and other “in-kind” donations including computer space for a Web site.

A volunteer support group has put on fund-raisers, including a slide show and a raffle.

“We’ve been known to call this ‘avalanche center by bake sale,’ ” said director Karl Birkeland.

In Mammoth Lakes, forecasting is even less established.

Mountain guide Todd Vogel relies on an informal network of friends and colleagues to keep track of avalanches like the one that scoured the slopes of T.J. Bowl. “All the guides call other guides and friends before heading out,” he said. “They ask if they’ve dug holes and what they found.”

Half an hour up U.S. 395, in the mountain hamlet of Bridgeport, Mono County sheriff’s Sgt. Boe Turner says avalanches have killed seven people and flattened dozens of houses since 1965. Turner talks of digging a man’s crushed body out of a home splintered by a snowslide, of evacuating guests from precariously placed lodges, of the 50 potential avalanche paths that cross roads in his jurisdiction.

Residents are calling for an early warning system, and Turner believes that it should be financed mainly by the Forest Service.

“After all, people come here because of the national forest land,” Turner said.

Forecasters want the government to fund forecasting centers and to finance research to supplement the studies they rely on from Europe, Japan and Canada. They also want the government to issue standard guidelines on interpreting data and issuing warnings.

Few believe the Forest Service will boost spending on avalanche safety any time soon.

“When it comes to natural disasters,” said Knox Williams, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center in Denver, “it takes something big to happen before federal funding comes in, like an avalanche taking out a bus full of nuns.”

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Avalanche Safety Tips

Advice from the experts on traveling safely in avalanche territory:

* Carry an avalanche transceiver that will transmit your location if you’re trapped. The transceiver can also be set to receive signals from a trapped skier. Learn how to use the transceiver; it takes practice.

* Carry a shovel and collapsible poles to probe the snow for victims in case you need to help with a rescue. Some collapsible ski poles can do double duty.

* Be alert after periods of steady snowfall. That’s when most avalanches occur.

* Slopes with angles of 25 to 50 degrees are most likely to slide.

* Cornices, or overhanging shelves of snow, can build up along ridges and can fall, triggering avalanches. When traveling along ridges, avoid the edges.

* Don’t ski, snowmobile or snowboard alone.

* When traveling through potentially unstable terrain, spread out and cross slopes one at a time, keeping close watch for sliding or settling snow.

* Most avalanches start above the timberline, on slopes opposite the prevailing wind.

* Heavily forested slopes are less likely to slide. However, avalanches can start above these slopes and travel through moderately dense forests.

* Watch for evidence of recent avalanches and look for snow that collapses or makes hollow sounds.

* Dig snow pits and learn to read the weather history of the snowpack.

* Check with local mountain guides, forecasters and outdoor travelers for conditions and hazards.

* Only one in three avalanche victims buried without a beacon survives. But if you’re caught in an avalanche, try to escape by grabbing a tree or rock. If you fall, get rid of your skis, poles and pack and “swim” on the slide to stay toward the surface. When the avalanche stops, try to stay near the surface and make an air pocket.

Associated Press