The week brought copious snow to much of the West.
Last week brought the sobering news of the first U.S. based skiing/riding related avalanche deaths. With massive amounts of new snow comes increased avalanche danger.
Heightened Awareness
The news is snow and cold temps. Since the solstice, we’ve been tracking SWE. What was once an arid winter in the West has pivoted since a series of troughs tracked through the West in the past week. With that new snow and the bump in SWE, we’ve seen increased avalanche danger across most regions. On Jan. 11, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) issued a special avalanche warning for the holiday weekend. Still, much of the state’s forecast zones remain at level 4, indicating high, “very dangerous avalanche conditions.”
A look at the National Avalanche Center indicates many forecast centers are calling for heightened awareness. As of Sunday morning, the Utah Avalanche Center (UAC) had elevated the danger ratings in all of its regularly forecasted zones outside of Moab to “extreme.” The call was to avoid all avalanche terrain as “deadly and dangerous avalanche conditions exist on all aspects and elevations.” For more information, and those in the SLC region and those curious outsiders, the Salt Lake Snowcast posted a special podcast, released Sunday, to report on the touchy snowpack and elevated danger rating.
(*By the time we published Monday morning, UAC had notched the danger rating down to “High.”)
Avalanche Incidents
The season’s first avalanche deaths preceded the weekend’s more foreboding avalanche forecasts. On Jan. 10, a lone person was buried and killed inbounds at Palisades Tahoe in the GS gulley area served by the KT 22 lift. The victim, 66-year-old Kenneth Kidd, died at the scene, while three other skiers were caught but survived. One of those survivors, Jason Parker, a 52-year-old Reno resident, was buried at least eight minutes until a probe strike located him, and he was unburied. You can read more about Parker’s experience here.
The following day, local news stations reported a second inbounds avalanche occurred at Alpine Meadows—a resort that shares a mountain with Palisades Tahoe but sits opposite that resort. The resorts are linked by a base-to-base gondola that allows skiers/riders to disembark on the summit of KT 22 ridge. No casualties were reported after the second slide, which occurred on Wolverine Bowl. A news report states, “Crews were out doing avalanche control before the resort’s opening. That includes shots from a 105mm howitzer and ski cutting.”
On Jan. 11, a group of three backcountry skiers were avalanched in Idaho, with a single skier killed. In a report filed by the Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center, the incident occurred near Steven’s Peak after the local sheriff’s office received an alert from a Garmin GPS device. You can find more information regarding the incident here. The body of Corey J. Zalewski, the victim, was recovered from the incident scene the following day.
The Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center published a preliminary report on Sunday, Jan. 14 regarding a fatal avalanche in Prater Canyon, south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. According to the report, two skiers comprised the group. The two skiers regrouped after skiing an initial section. After the regroup, skier 2 descended and triggered a slide that swept him downslope where he was buried. The partner conducted a beacon search and excavated skier 2 in roughly 15 minutes. The victim was unresponsive. The Jackson Hole News and Guide reports the victim was 41 year old David Rice, a former resident of Jackson Hole.
All this is horrible news.
Europe, which sees roughly 100 avalanche-related deaths annually, has recorded 16 deaths this season, with the calendar of record beginning Oct. 1. France and Switzerland account for four fatal incidents each, whereas Italy has experienced five fatalities. Nine of 16 deaths are categorized as backcountry skiing or off-piste skiing incidents.
News from TAR
In the most recent edition of The Avalanche Review (TAR), an interesting piece caught our attention titled “Guide Mortality in Fat Tailed Domains.” Mike Austin, the author, helps the reader better understand some of the risks guides undertake and their workplace’s unforgiven mountain theater. Of note, this bit of information stood out:
“Between 1995 and 2018, a total of 121 French guides died in mountain incidents. To give context, expressed as a percentage this is almost identical to that of US soldiers serving in the Vietnam War.”
Another point raised by the author is how the “structure of the learning” environment between ski patrollers and guides differs. At its most basic, Austin writes, “Ski patrollers and forecasters are avalanche hunters. Guides are avalanche avoiders.”
Austin asserts that ski patrollers are immersed in finding and triggering snow instabilities each morning: a routine where they get feedback analyzing/mitigating the same familiar slopes—presumably in bounds. It follows, writes Austin, that these patrollers develop intuition. As a problem arises, Austin writes: “Patrollers need to be wary of the implications of interpreting a lack of feedback as a lack of instability, as they are often drowning in direct feedback from repeatedly triggering familiar locations. We know that a lack of positive feedback does not always equate to a lack of hazard.”
Conversely, Austin adds some insight to a guides’ dilemma, where their training and experience might not allow them to develop the ski patrollers’ intuition. About guides, Austin adds, “ski guides routinely make consequential decisions in an ocean of uncertainty. Awareness of an avalanche problems’ existence and its distribution is sufficient information for them to plan their day, effectively avoiding the avalanche problem: a seemingly wise strategy. However, the lack of direct feedback that results from this strategy can inhibit the development of inhibition.”
(The rabbit hole goes deeper. This is a news roundup, after all, so keeping things, generally speaking, “tight” is a goal. Maybe an aspirational one.)
In 2022, Austin published another article on his own site, Avalanche Geeks, titled “Using intuition in the Backcountry. Moving on From the Moneyball Mindset.” In it, he expands on the concept of intuition and cites ideas from Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.
“Expert intuition is gained when three criteria are met:
- Repeated practice.
- Immediate feedback. You have to know at the time whether you got it right or wrong.
- Regular order in a high validity environment, such as in a game like chess.”
We are calling it right here. There is more to expand on regarding guiding, intuition, and even our enthusiasts’ practice of avalanche avoidance in the backcountry. Further, as we push into the (thankfully) deeper-snow part of the backcountry season, the time is now when it all seems more real.
