Avalanche center enters 10th year of education

"If you go out in the woods today you'd better go in disguise.

"If you go out in the woods today you're in for a big surprise."

Traveling in the backcountry this winter is no nursery rhyme. The warm front that hit Northwest Montana last week created a layer of ice and crust on top of the backcountry snowpack that could result in dangerous conditions once more snow falls.

"Last week definitely created a heads-up," said Ted Steiner, education coordinator for the Glacier Country Avalanche Center.

Regional snowpit investigations by Stan Bones of the Flathead National Forest show significant snow depths above 5,500 feet in elevation, but considerably less snow below that. In his weekly avalanche report, Bones said there is a significant melt-freeze ice layer that developed before the Thanksgiving snows. This interface between the less dense, softer surface snow and the larger-grained, older base snow appears to be a significant weak layer that could fail with moderate to easy force. Bones' current avalanche advisory reports "considerable" avalanche danger between 5,500 and 7,500 feet.

The Glacier Country Avalanche Center, which enters its 10th year this season, provides weekly reports on backcountry avalanche conditions and offers courses on avalanche safety.

As backcountry use has increased, particularly among snowmobilers, the services provided by the center have been in higher demand. Last year, about 750 people attended clinics and programs offered by the avalanche center, Steiner said. Since 1993, 12 people have died in avalanches in Northwest Montana, 11 of them snowmobilers. The other fatality was a backcountry skier.

Corporate and individual donations have helped the center maintain and expand its offerings. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which last January had an avalanche knock 15 railcars off the tracks near Essex, donated $5,000 to the center.

There have already been two avalanche-related fatalities in Montana this year. Two 25-year-old ice climbers, Nathaniel Stevens and Bryan Nelson, both of Missoula, were killed in a slide on Sphinx Mountain near Ennis, about eight miles southwest of Big Sky ski resort.

The United States has had a total of seven fatalities this winter, all of them in the last two months. Three of them were snowmobilers, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

Last year, 21 people died in avalanches in the United States, although Montana had no avalanche-related fatalities, the center said.

The 2002-2003 season, however, was a different story. Four people died in avalanches in Montana. On Jan. 22, 2003, a snowmobiler died in an avalanche near Wolverine Peak in the Gallatin National Forest. On Feb. 1, a snowmobiler was killed near Lincoln; another snowmobiler was killed in the Crazy Mountains on Feb. 2 and yet another snowmobiler was killed near Cooke City on March 9.

The worst season in North America in the last seven years was 1997-98, when 45 people died in avalanches in North America.

Even skiers and snowboarders who venture out-of-bounds at local ski areas should be cautious. On Jan. 29, 1998, a skier was caught in an avalanche just out of bounds at Big Mountain ski area. The skier was buried but not injured. The resort has yet to open Chair 11 in the Hellroaring Basin, and the nearby out-of-bounds areas accessed by Chair 11 are also off-limits to passholders.

It's the goal of Sabine Altieri, the executive director of the Glacier Country Avalanche Center, to educate the skiers and snowboarders who are venturing into these out-of-bounds areas from Big Mountain but are not carrying avalanche transceivers, probe poles and shovels.

Altieri wants to try to reach out to what she calls "the Canyon Crowd," the people skiing the popular Canyon Creek chutes from Flower Point near the summit of Big Mountain. Each day, dozens of people kick off their skis or snowboards after skiing down from the summit and begin the 30-minute hike out to Flower Point; from there, several options exist for skiers to drop into Canyon Creek and hike back to the bottom of Chair 7, oftentimes pulled by a snowmobile passer-by.

It's been a few years since anyone's been buried in a slide in the Canyon Creek area, but Altieri cringes at the thought of the number of people who go out there each unprepared. "Every year I just get this anxiety like, 'Is this the year that a 16-year-old gets it (killed)?'"

Altieri knows the situation all too well, because as a skier growing up in Whitefish she was one of the "Canyon Crowd."

"Every time there was new snow we'd all rush out to the Canyon," she said.

The Glacier Country Avalanche Center will present an avalanche seminar for women on Feb. 25-26 in an effort "to reel in" that group of backcountry users also, said Altieri, whose mother, Paddy Dusing, was president of the center back in 1995. Three of the center's 10 avalanche-safety instructors are women.

The other demographic group that Altieri wants to reach is the over-30 crowd of experienced skiers and snowboarders, people who might have taken an avalanche course five years ago but have not stayed current on their avalanche-safety education.

"It's not something that you can let go stagnant," she said.

Weekly avalanche advisories are issued at www.glacieravalanche.org or by calling 257-8402.

The Glacier Country Avalanche Center will have several clinics and sessions this winter to help educate the public about traveling safely in the winter backcountry. The center will present "Avalanche Awareness Days" Jan. 14-16 on Big Mountain, with several sessions and slideshows of avalanche safety offered.

Steiner, who has been with the center since its inception, said it's not the goal of the center to put the fear of God into backcountry users - even though current snow conditions might be a bit sketchy.

"It's only as dangerous as the person makes it," Steiner said. "As long as the person has the skills and information to make decisions based on snow, weather and terrain, they'll probably be OK."

Avalanche education can help save lives, simply by the awareness that it raises among the people in the backcountry. "Most avalanches are human-caused," Steiner said. "They're not some mysterious event that just happens to occur."

Still, with the current snowpack conditions, people should be aware of the dangers that exist now - and throughout the rest of the winter. "This will be a layer that we'll really want to watch," Steiner said. "A slab release on top of this could release a slide all the way to the ground."