This year’s annual Northwest Forecaster’s Meeting and United States Avalanche Control Council (USACC) meeting was held at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl on March 15th & 16th, with participants from seven regional ski areas and representatives from the National Forest Service on Mt. Hood. Our thanks once again have to go out to Brett Wesson and the Ski Bowl Ski Patrol for the use of their facilities and for being such gracious hosts.
The first day started off with coffee and doughnuts, and the aforementioned Brett Wesson, giving us a description of the history, facilities, and boundary area of Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. After greetings and introductions, he went into the challenges he has been faced with from essentially having to create an avalanche mitigation program from the ground up when he took over as the ski patrol manager four years ago. These challenges were created by the fact that his predecessor had essentially run the program by himself and without leaving any written policies or guidelines available upon his departure. This has been his challenge since taking over.
After Brett was Taylor Everett, Snow Safety Supervisor at the Mission Ridge Ski Resort, just outside of Wenatchee, Washington. He began his presentation with a “bird’s” eye view of the ski area, highlighting the area of concern for his presentation. This being an out-of-bounds area that seldom receives enough snow to be skiable, but two seasons ago, was the site of an avalanche burial and subsequent partner rescue. Included in the case study was the weather reports, results of the mitigation work done that morning, and the unique challenges in association with the reporting from the incident, namely the confusion with Rivercom (911 provider) and an MVA on a similar longitude concerning a Chevy “Avalanche”. This incident showed that even with proper forecasting and mitigation measures, bad things can still happen, and sometimes luck prevails.
Chris Morin, Assistant Snow Safety Supervisor for the Crystal Mt. Ski Patrol, was the next to present with a recap of deep snow safety and the NARSID (Non-Avalanche Related Snow Immersion Death) phenomenon. In-bounds burials and out-of-bounds burials tend to receive much more attention at the ski area though NARSID deaths are much more prevalent statistically, and have almost no signage associated with them. Highlighting on liability issues such as failure to warn and failure to rescue, Chris recommended to the group that we treat such reports as we would for any avalanche burial, in-bounds or out, promote current educational aids such as the deep snow safety flyer and treewellsnowsafety.com, and the creation of suffocation hazard signage to be put up when the conditions warrant. The presentation’s next phase broke down a recent case study of a local man that is presumed to be a NARSID at Crystal Mt., how the hill was partitioned into sections to facilitate the search, and the community’s response to find one of their own.
Betsy Norsen, of Mt. Bachelor presented after with a breakdown of a unique feature to their hill called the “Moraine”. This constantly changing feature has presented a dangerous challenge to their mitigation efforts, as it remains inconsistent in slope angles throughout the year, and inconsistent in its slide history. Mt. Bachelor has very interesting environmental factors, including a lack of visibility during storm cycles, simultaneous wind directions affecting the feature, and extreme rimeing that renders their telemetry, as it pertains to the Moraine, almost non-existent. Introducing mitigation crews to this environment presented unacceptable risks to the patrol, and after several near misses, a solution had to be created. After safety considerations were analyzed, room in the budget was made for an avalauncher to assist in mitigation efforts. Even adding the remote-fire capability of the avalauncher and a new round, challenges of the slide history on the Moraine still persist, and new solutions are still being sought.
After breaking for lunch, Chris Talbot, Patrol Manager at White Pass Ski Area presented. His issue pertained to the area’s recent expansion, which was the largest in North America this year. The question on his mind was “how do you educate the stupid”? With over sixty lost persons venturing into the new terrain, White Pass became very creative in encouraging its guests to become aware of the new boundary. This started as lollies, quickly progressed to rope lines, and finally to permanent fencing, especially in the problem area’s Chris highlighted. The propensity of backcountry use, and therefore searches, in certain zones has lead the area to ask the Forest Service to include a zone along Highway 12, recessed to more safely move skiers up and off the highway.
A more sobering topic brought Patty Morrison, Snow Safety Supervisor at Stevens Pass, to us. Her presentation was about an avalanche fatality that occurred in the backcountry near Leavenworth in Washington. Patty broke down the circumstances that lead to the event, including weather and snowpack analysis dating several months back. She also showed a slide show of the surrounding area, pictures of the areas that had been previously skied by the group that day, the pocket that initiated the larger slide, and the run-out of the path. Included also was the pit-profile taken from the scene. The level of experience of the group, being composed almost entirely of ski patrollers, or former patrollers, and all with local backcountry or avalanche science training, indicated that the sport we’ve dedicated ourselves to is still not completely under our control. Even when everything is done right, the mountain still has the final say.
Lastly was Tighe Stoyanof, Snow Safety Supervisor at Mt. Hood Meadows, showing us the latest monster out of the Heather and Clark Canyon drainage. A four to twenty foot crown, originating in the ski area boundary (Super Bowl), gouged out thirty foot walls, and left a deposition pile of upwards of sixty feet within a hundred feet of the upper exit chair from Heather Canyon. It also came within a hundred yards of the historical run-out. Tighe pointed out new techniques that he and his team have been able to use to pinpoint the exact time of the slide to determine what its trigger may have been. This time they were able to use seismic sensors, placed on Mt. Hood from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, to determine exactly when the slide came down and corroborate that information with their shot records and tell that it came down from an explosive artillery charge. He also mentioned the weather and snowpack factors that lead to the event, and the new artillery placements they have been working with to improve the efficacy their program.
The final half hour of day one was spent discussing Chapter business. We covered the upcoming Pacific Northwest Chapter of the ISEE Annual Meeting and Seminar, and encouraged our membership to become members of their local chapter. As blasters, we all essentially do the same thing, and legislation that affects one of us, affects all. With a unified voice, we gain greater acceptance within the industry at large, and become more effective at addressing legislation pertaining to the safe operation of our field. It was announced that the ISEE would like to see the creation of a sub-section to the Society for avalanche mitigation, and the USACC would be an appropriate group to get that ball rolling. The invitation from the international organization should be taken seriously and as an honor. After last fall’s avalanche mitigation blasting seminar, we came to the conclusion that we essentially missed our target audience. Instead of changing that audience, we decided that another time of the year would be more appropriate to encourage beginning blasters to be involved. The conclusion we came to was that we should attach next year’s seminar to the Pacific Northwest Regional APP Mid-Winter Clinic, as an educational portion. The APP helped us with our previous clinic, and our target audience will be there already, and in our region as well. This seemed a natural fit. Next we discussed potential locations for next year’s annual meeting. Montana and Idaho was struck down, and it was decided to go back to Washington, to either Stevens Pass or Mt. Baker. Expect more information on these subjects later.
On day two, we all met at the Outback lodge around 9:00am ready for a day on the snow. Ski Bowl was not open for operations during the day so the area was ours with 6" of new. With Mountain Dept. standing by to turn chairs each lap, we spun a half-dozen laps in Upper Bowl examining routes and shot locations. After a brief stop at Ski Bowl's Patrol facilities, we moved on to the Outback terrain for two more laps of the same. Topics of conversation included route safety, effective shot placement, terrain management, and avalanche rescue training, among others. The skiing conditions were excellent and allowed for a thorough tour of the area. After a day of learning and laying down fresh tracks, we called it a day at around 3:00pm and headed back to the lodge for beverages.
This year’s Annual Meeting was a great success. Much thanks again to all that presented, attended, and helped make the meeting run as well as it did. Thanks again to Mt. Hood Ski Bowl for the facilities, and Brett Wesson for making sure it all happened. See you all next year!
