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I was 23 when I started backcountry skiing. I’d been recreating in the mountains my entire life, resort skiing, backpacking, and climbing volcanoes in the Cascades. I’d taken a National Outdoor Leadership School mountaineering course, and I was writing for a ski magazine. And yet I felt completely lost about where to start. So I borrowed some gear and took an American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) Level 1 course, which at the time seemed like the only way to begin. AIARE’s three-day recreational Level 1 comprises 24 hours of education, usually about eight hours of classroom learning followed by two eight-hour field days, and offers a crash course in snow safety, avalanche terrain, and companion rescue. It has long been the standard entry point for backcountry beginners. ....
When Martin Volken, owner of North Bend’s Pro Guiding Service, earned his IFMGA guiding pin back in 1996 in his native Switzerland, much of the town turned out for the ceremony including the mayor. “You are a high-altitude representative of the Swiss tourism industry,” the mayor told Volken. “I expect you to act like a professional.” Such is the importance that Europe places on its guides. In the United States, guiding has avoided such esteem. Nowhere is that more true than with ski guiding, which is too often viewed as anathema to American backcountry skiing’s DIY ethos, despite the fact that it can keep inexperienced skiers safer, show many backcountry skiers a far better time than they’d experience on their own, and add to even a seasoned skier’s mountain sense. ....
51:24 On Feb. 6 of this year, two groups of skiers went into Salt Lake City’s Millcreek Canyon for a day of powdery ski runs in the backcountry. They were experienced skiers, knowledgeable about the dangers of avalanches but were still caught by the uncertain, shifting conditions of a snow-packed mountainside. Four young people lost their lives that day. In the wake of this tragedy, we look at the history of avalanches, the snow science behind the slides and, critically, the human factor. Snow careening down a mountain generally only matters to us insofar that it affects humans. We’ll talk with three avalanche experts about what an avalanche is and what it means to us this Friday at noon. ....
So far avalanches have claimed 25 people, all but one living in the West. Across the West and in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming, backcountry slopes received several feet of new snow recently that piled up onto a poor foundation of snow made rotten by long stretches of dry periods during December and January. âWhen we get a heavy snowfall it sits on a very poor foundation,â said Bill Radecky, an avalanche educator and guide based in Rigby. While ski resorts mitigate avalanche hazards, backcountry users must be their own hazard experts. The Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center recorded 16 slides in the past week, several were touched off by skiers. One avalanche hit Teton Pass on Tuesday. ....
Credit Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center In the first week of February, avalanches in the United States killed at least 14 people. That s the highest number of deaths in a seven-day period for at least a century. Experts say it s partly because more people are out in the backcountry. I think starting in March, with the closure of so many ski resorts, many people turned to ski touring in the backcountry in order to recreate outside in perhaps a safer way in the pandemic standpoint, said avalanche educator Jenna Malone. Malone works for the American Avalanche Institute. Most of the deaths are a result of a persistent slab avalanche problem. That means there is weak snow in the snowpack, andthe normal signs and stability tests that people are trained to do to avoid avalanches aren t there, Malone said. ....