From Sierra Slopes to Strife

These weapons are going from where the action is really cold to where the action is really hot.

California ski operators said Tuesday that the U.S. military was reclaiming five howitzers it leased to ski resorts last year to fight avalanches so the weapons could be used by troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Resort operators at Mammoth Mountain and Alpine Meadows use the artillery pieces to blast slopes clear of snowy overhangs that could fall and trigger avalanches that endanger skiers.

Army officials said they hoped to give troops the two-wheeled, truck-towed M-119 A-1 howitzers in 90 days.

“Supposedly they’re going to try to get us an older version of the howitzer as replacements,” said Ray Belli, a ski patrolman at Alpine Meadows near Lake Tahoe, where a pair of the M-119s are in use. “Lucky for us the ski season is almost over.”

Mammoth Mountain has used three of the M-119s to protect the 1.3 million skiers expected to visit the High Sierra resort before the end of the ski season on Memorial Day.

“They’re vital to Mammoth. A lot of people’s livelihoods are related to skiing. But the war effort is a greater need,” said Pam Murphy, a senior vice president for the Mammoth Mountain resort.

In the past, the military provided Mammoth with old-style recoilless rifles for controlling avalanches. But ammunition became hard to get, and the Army decided to swap them for howitzers, Murphy said.

“They told us to try out the 119s on a one-year lease,” she said. “They were going to let us know by June 1 if the lease would be extended.”

The howitzers can reportedly fire up to 10 shells a minute for up to 10 miles, although ski patrol workers shoot more slowly and for much shorter distances.

Belli said Alpine Meadows used its howitzers about five times this winter. Murphy could not estimate how many howitzer rounds were fired at Mammoth. She said the explosives shake overhanging snow loose without damaging the slope surface, which is frequently under 12 feet of snow.

Her resort’s employees also clear slopes manually and “go out and throw dynamite” to trigger harmless avalanches when ski runs are closed to the public, Murphy said.

Alpine Meadows will begin crating up its howitzers immediately, Belli said.

The sooner the troops get them the better, the Army said.

The guns will be immediately serviced and shipped overseas, where they are in short supply, Don Bowen of the Rock Island, Ill., Arsenal told Associated Press.

“The replacement cost if you were to build one today is probably somewhere in the vicinity of $1 million,” Bowen said.

Even for a ski resort that gets 440 inches of snow a year, that kind of cold cash isn’t easy to dig up.

“But we’ll find an alternative,” promised Mammoth’s Murphy.