The Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center—An Overview

Our goal:

Help keep people on top of the Greatest Snow on Earth instead of buried beneath it.

Where do avalanche accidents occur?

Ninety nine percent of all avalanche fatalities occur in the backcountry—areas outside of ski area boundaries where no avalanche control is done. Ski areas and highway avalanche control crews routinely knock down avalanches with explosives before the public arrives each morning. They have done their jobs so well that since 1980, less than one percent of avalanche fatalities have involved general public on open runs at ski areas or on open highways.

What kind of people get caught in avalanches?

Ninety two percent of people killed in avalanches since 1985 have been recreationists, and they are almost always very skilled in their sport. In almost all cases their skill in their sport significantly outpaces their avalanche skills. Looking at the most recent 5 years of national data, nearly twice as many snowmobilers have been killed as any other user group, followed by climbers, backcountry skiers, snowboarders and miscellaneous recreationists such as hikers and snowshoers.

How do people get caught?

In over 90 percent of avalanche fatalities, the avalanche was triggered by the victim or someone in the victim’s party. As Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Which is actually good, because it means that, 90 percent of the time, we can avoid avalanche accidents through our route finding and snow stability decisions.

In summary, avalanche fatalities occur almost exclusively in the backcountry, almost always involve recreationists, and almost all avalanche incidents can be avoided if we choose.

How we help solve the problem:

We give backcountry travelers the weapon of knowledge. In order to avoid triggering avalanches, backcountry travelers need:

Critical, up-to-date avalanche information.

Our avalanche advisories give the public critical avalanche information they need to make their life-and-death decisions in avalanche terrain and we forecast snow stability and weather trends into the future. Our information helps the public to decide what kind of terrain is safe, what kind is dangerous and we give them useful clues to look for when they venture into avalanche terrain.

The public can access these advisories in the following ways:

w Recorded telephone message updated each day

w Live interviews each day on three different public radio stations

w The Internet

w Faxes sent out each morning to businesses and Forest Service offices

w In times of extreme or unusual avalanche conditions, we issue an avalanche warning that reaches all the broadcast and print media as well as NOAA weather radio.

Finally, we “preach the avalanche gospel” as much as possible to the local, national and international media. This season, for instance, several documentaries played on national television including National Geographic and several on the Discovery Channel, PBS and the Weather Channel. The Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center staff is featured in most of these documentaries.

Avalanche education:

We teach about 50 free, basic avalanche awareness classes each season. These not only give the public an overview of the avalanche problem, but also some basic avalanche skills. These classes encourage the public to take a more involved avalanche class offered by the private sector.

Our Philosophy

Just because people hear the information doesn’t mean they listen. Therefore, we try to make the advisories entertaining so that people will remember what they hear and enjoy the experience enough to use the advisories regularly. We try and use all the standard tools of effective writing and speaking such as using active voice, first person, personal examples and stories to illustrate points, humor where appropriate and reading the bulletins in a natural voice, like talking to a friend. The recorded bulletins are informal, chatty and funny, yet informative.

We believe local forecasters do a much better job than distant forecasters.

Local people know local conditions better. They can get out in the mountains every day, they see weather and snow out their window and they talk with people on the street about it. Because of this, we believe that local people should issue avalanche bulletins for local areas, as long as they have the avalanche skills to do so. For this reason, four crews of avalanche forecasters operate in Utah, one in Logan, another in Salt Lake City, one on the Manti Skyline and a fourth in Moab.

We believe in a strong field-based program.

Avalanche forecasting is just as much art as science. And because of this, computers never have, and most likely never will, be able to forecast avalanche hazard as well as an experienced and skilled human being. Avalanche forecasting works best when the forecaster has an intimate, daily connection to the snowpack. We notice that the longer we spend in an office, the more out of touch with the snowpack we become. Therefore we always put in one or more field days before our forecasting shift, and we seldom have more than two forecast days in a row.

This is our philosophy and it seems to be working. More people access the FSUAC bulletin each season than any other avalanche advisory in North America, and the number keep increasing by an average of 20 percent per year. The numbers of people going into the backcountry keep increasing exponentially, yet the death rate has risen more slowly. We also see an increasing demand for avalanche education and information, not only by Utahans, but also by the national and international media.

We are very passionate about our work because it’s more than a job, it saves lives.

A look Under the Hood

The UAC is operationally separated into four entities:

· Bear River drainage (Logan area – northern Utah and southeast Idaho)

· Wasatch Mountains (Ogden, Salt Lake, Park City and Provo area mountains)

· Manti Skyline (Fairfield Canyon – Wasatch Plateau)

· La Sal Mountains (near Moab)

Greg Johnson heads the Logan operation with Spencer Logan as an assistant. Spencer is employed by Utah State University. In past years, Mike Jenkins of Utah State University ran the Logan center on a part time basis. For the past two seasons, Greg Johnson, a Forest Service employee ran the center, supported partially by Olympic funds. We hope to find funding to continue the Forest Service operation of the Logan center in the future

In Moab, Eric Trenbeath heads the center after being an assistant for the past couple seasons. The Moab office is located in the Moab Ranger District on the Manti-Lasal National Forest.

The Manti Skyline (Wasatch Plateau) avalanche forecast was issued for weekends-only by Craig Gordon and Eric Trenbeath. Funding for this program comes from a generous grant from the National Recreation Trails Program administered through Utah State Parks. Craig and Eric work part time as snowmobile avalanche educators and part time as forecasters for the Manti Skyline. In its second full season of operation, it continues as a very successful program.

Last, but not least, the vast majority of the backcountry use occurs in the Wasatch Range of northern Utah. A staff of seven full time workers covered the Ogden, Salt Lake City, Park City and Provo area mountains—arguably the most heavily used mountain range in the U.S. Bruce Tremper, in his 16^th season, is the Director. This season, Tremper spent most of his time working on Olympic-related avalanche issues while Evelyn Lees oversaw the day-to-day operations. Although Bruce Tremper spends most of his time in the Wasatch operation, he offers technical oversight to all three operations to insure consistency in quality. The rest of the very experienced Salt Lake staff include: Evelyn Lees, Tom Kimbrough and Carol Ciliberti, plus, Ethan Greene and Drew Hardesty worked the past two seasons under Olympic funds. This season, using Olympic funds, we hired Evan Stevens as a contract computer programmer for our office and doubled as a valuable second person in the office to help out during the morning crunch time. Unfortunately, at the end of the season, Carol Ciliberti accepted a forecaster position with the National Weather Service in California so she will not return for next season. Also, with the loss of Olympic funds one additional position will have to be cut for next season.

All are Forest Service employees under the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The Salt Lake office is co-located with the National Weather Service at the Salt Lake International Airport.

Lastly, a private, nonprofit group, the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, contracts a number of “volunteer” observers, who are reimbursed for their expenses at around $10.00 per day. They also hire the intrepid Bob Athey as a full time backcountry observer.

The Utah Avalanche Center is a Forest Service program under the Wasatch-Cache National Forest and the Manti-La Sal National Forest, in partnership with Utah State University, the State of Utah Department of Public Safety, Division of Emergency Management, Salt Lake County, the National Weather Service and private contributions through the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center.

The public can access the bulletins in the following ways:

Telephone:

Salt Lake City - (24 phone lines) (801) 364-1581

Logan (multi-line PBX system at Utah State University) (435) 797-4146

Park City (multi-line PBX system at Park City Resort) (435) 658-5512

Ogden (multi-line PBX system at Weber State University) (801) 626-8600

Provo (multi-line PBX system at Brigham Young University) (435) 378-4333

Alta (multi-line PBX system through the Town of Alta) (801) 742-0830

Moab (single phone line) (435) 259-7669

Manti Skyline (courtesy of Utah State Parks) (800) 648-7433

Snowmobile hotline (courtesy of Utah State Parks) (800) 648-7433

Radio Stations (live on-air reports each morning around 8:00 am)

KRCL 91 FM

KPCW 92 FM

KCPW 105.7 FM

Internet:

http://www.avalanche.org

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Saltlake

http://www.csac.org

Fax:

We operate an automated fax distribution of the bulletin for selected businesses and Forest Service offices that post a hard copy for the public to read.

To contact our office: (801) 524-5304 (phone)

(801) 524-4030 (fax)

e-mail: uafc@avalanche.org

How we Generate Avalanche Advisories

We often think of ourselves as natural detectives. We gather as much information as possible, and then we communicate our analysis to the public. Each day we look at weather, talk to ski area avalanche control programs, helicopter ski companies, highway control programs and volunteers, but our most important source of information comes from us, from our up-close-and-personal work with snowpack. Last, but not least, we regularly travel into the mountains, where we not only get our best information, but we see our theories tested in an unequivocal way, when our customers recreate in avalanche terrain.

We split our time more or less equally between the mountains and the office. With our staff of five people, we have a rotating schedule in which one person sits in the driver's seat in the office as the forecaster for that day while the others either head into the mountains to look at snow, work in the office on various education or computer projects or take their scheduled days off.

Field Day:

A typical "field day" might begin at 6:00 in the morning when we wake up, listen to our trusty NOAA weather radio, get on our home computer and look at the data from all the automated weather stations in the mountain. Like everyone else, we call our own avalanche advisory to get the latest information. Then we jump in the car or on the bus and head for the mountains.

We usually travel on skis and we use a snowmobile to access more remote areas. We usually travel with a partner using all the usual safety equipment like electronic avalanche beacons, shovels, probes, belay rope and radios. We seldom have a regular patrol area, but we simply go to the area that concerns us the most, or to a place that we know is representative, where we can look at snow on a variety of aspects, elevations and terrain types. We almost always go into the backcountry--meaning areas outside ski area boundaries where no avalanche control is done. We put climbing skins on our skis and huff-and-puff to the top of a mountain, take off the skins, ski down into another valley, put the skins back on again, go to another ridge, and so on.

And yes, it can certainly be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. It takes years of experience and training to be an accomplished avalanche forecaster, not to mention to be able to do it safely. Most of our staff have degrees in some kind of physical science such as meteorology, geology or engineering, three staff members have master’s degrees and two are working towards their PhD. We also have a number of years experience doing avalanche control at ski areas, plus, we all are accomplished mountaineers with many decades of accumulated mountain experience. Finally, we all stay in top physical condition so we can efficiently cover lots of terrain.

We gather information from many different places in many different ways. For instance, we dig snow pits on several different slopes to get a good feel for the distribution pattern of snow stability. A snow pit, like the name implies, is about a 5 foot (1.5 meter) hole in the snow we dig and then we do a variety of stress tests to determine the stability of the snowpack. We also look at the crystallography of the various layers, and measure temperatures and sometimes density. This isn't nearly as complicated or time-consuming as it seems, as we usually spend no more than 15 minutes in a single snow pit. We would rather dig several quick pits in several areas than do one detailed pit in several different areas because once we figure out what kind of avalanche dragon we're dealing with, we want to know the distribution of the pattern so we can communicate the pattern to the public.

We also test the snow in other ways, such as sawing off cornices, which bounce down the slope, keep close track of the pattern of recent avalanches and we always pay very close attention to the present snow surface because it's much easier to map a layer of snow when it's still on the surface then after it's buried by the next storm. Finally, when we get home, we leave a detailed message on our answer machine in the office, which the forecaster will hear early the next morning. We also fax a written version of our observation, including the snow pit profiles, so that the forecaster has less to write down the next morning. Finally, we often call the person who will forecast the next day and talk to them in more detail, making sure not to call after bedtime, which is 8:00 pm, since they have to be up by 3:00 am the next morning.

Office:
The office days are brutal. We usually arrive at our office, co-located with the National Weather Service near the Salt Lake Airport, around 4:00 am--earlier on big storm days. There's only one avalanche person in the office, so the pressure and time constraint is intense.

First, the lead weather forecaster for the National Weather Service briefs us on the general weather setup and then we jump on the weather computers ourselves and type up a detailed mountain weather forecast that goes onto the Internet by 6:00 am. Then, we check our answer machines and write down all the field observations not only from our staff, but from our army of volunteer observers, ski areas, helicopter skiing companies and highway control programs. After that, we furiously kick into high gear and write backcountry avalanche advisories customized for five different zones in northern Utah, record those advisories into six different answer machines, each one customized for its area, do three live radio interviews, all while trying to answer the phone from ski areas calling to leave observations or talk about avalanche hazard. The recorded advisories are out by 7:30, and by 8:15 am, when we're done with the last live radio interview, we finally collapse with relief, take that bathroom break we've needed for the last couple hours and take a walk outside and watch the sun rise and hope that our information is accurate. An average of 800 people call the avalanche recording and twice that number get it over the Internet, most of them head into the backcountry to test our theories, sometimes with their lives.

Then it's lunch time, just when most people are eating their breakfast. After lunch, we start answering phones, collecting data, updating clipboards and just catching up. Finally, by 10:00 am we start the whole process again to put out an afternoon update, which is usually finished by about noon to 1:00 pm. Then our day is done. We head home and get some sleep.

Snow and Avalanches in Utah