"We've been updating as necessary," says Logan. "Today that meant creating a new separate page for all the incidents in October." The avalanche incidents in Colorado now number seven, with nine skiers/riders caught: "Of those nine, three have been partly buried and two have been fully buried," says Logan. The most recent, Oct. 31, involved a 17-year-old from Vail who was life-flighted by heli off a slope near Fremont Pass.
In Colorado, avalanche fatalities—going by the statistics—are always a matter of when, not if. But this season is feeling particularly ominous. Maybe two or three seasons of relative stability are working to re-write institutional memory about Colorado snowpack: Some of the least predictable and most fragile in the world.
"I'm frankly amazed by some of the stuff people are jumping into in early October, mid-October. Forty-five degree lines and then they're surprised when something avalanches? They're wandering into avalanche terrain, they're getting after some aggressive lines and then they're triggering things," says Logan.
"We've seen this as a pattern before, but it's been November. This year it's just happened a month earlier."
Logan and his colleagues are monitoring Internet ski forums and blogs, including TGR, where a number of first-hand accounts of the avalanches have been posted (and discussed). Online information-sharing about hazards would seem to work against further skier-triggered avalanches. And yet the incidents keep mounting.
"There's a couple things going on," says Logan. "One, we haven't seen this snowy an October in quite a while. When you look at it climatologically, it's not exceptional. But it's certainly the snowiest in the last five or ten years. Two, the places were there's decent riding are also the places where the snow's blown or drifted in—up high. And three, you have avalanche-prone terrain and people in there trying to ski it—that's all three parts of the [avalanche] equation," says Logan.
"Maybe folks' skills are rusty or they're not evaluating things as they might normally be because it's early season. ... I think also people are getting more and more aggressive about things. I started backcountry skiing almost 20 years ago. We were in leather boots, narrow skis and we were somewhat limited in what we could get into. And, at least among my mentors, there was a much more conservative approach about building up to things."
Asked whether he shared an ominous feeling about things to come, Logan replied, "There are times when there are bad feelings at the office, times when we'll talk about feeling like something bad's gonna happen, and this October and now November has certainly been interesting in that way."
"From reading those message board posts, it's very hard to read between the lines. It's like they're reflective of the mistakes they're making, in hindsight, but they're not reflective about the lack of data they're collecting and evaluating and interpreting while they're out there. One thing we've tried to emphasize is that a snow pit is not a good go/no-go point. Before you dig a snow pit you should already have a good picture of what the snow is like. You're using it as a hypothesis to verify what you're already looking for; you want to avoid that false-stable result."
"There are some interesting similarities too. All these incidents so far are at high elevation—because that's where the snow is. And they're all northeast aspects, places where the snow's gonna stick around and be windloaded. And in all but a few incidents they've found weak layers right above the ground on an ice crust. So a very classic weak layer with snow drifted in on top of it; that's been common in at least three incidents."
"We don't even have a current [avalanche danger] rating out now; there's just not enough information coming in to put something out that definitive like we usually do through the winter. But we're trying to keep people appraised of what we're having reported to us. And for some of these [avalanches] we have enough information from folks that we'll have more complete write-ups shortly."
"We love to collect info about close calls, near misses, avalanches where people are caught—it makes for better forecasting and when we do get enough information they can make for useful stories for backcountry skiers to read about. The good decisions people made, the bad decisions they made, and some good analysis. All that is good for gaining experience, rather than, say, going out and getting yourself caught in 15 or 20 avalanches personally."
"I hope we have a nice safe winter. But we'll see what happens in the next month here. We'll see what it sets us up for."
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