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Learning about weather, snow, mountains and yourself can keep you safe when avalanche danger is high.
It might see as if I'm harping about this, but I'm just trying to do what I can to keep people safe while acknowledging we're all out to have fun and take risks, too! -- Dena
Four people have died of avalanches in Colorado this winter, including three in separate incidents Sunday.
A man died snowmobiling near Buffalo Pass and two skiers died, one at Winter Park and one at Vail.
Lance Trujillo has ridden snowmobiles in Eagle County for a long time and he told the Vail Daily News he’s never seen the snowpack as slide-prone as it is now.
Trujillo is president of the Holy Cross Powder Hounds, a snowmobile club. He was out in the backcountry over the weekend, and was surprised at what he saw.
“Everything’s moving out there,” Trujillo said.
Brian Lazar, deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said the snowpack is moving because the base is so unstable, thanks in part to lower-than-average snowfall in the first months of this winter.
“It’s very sensitive to natural and human triggers right now,” Lazar said.
“It’s one of the most shallow snowpacks in 40 years,” said professional skier Chris Anthony. “The snow on the ground is so unstable that any weight can set it off.”
Longtime avalanche instructor Mike Duffy said he and a group of snowmobile riders saw at least 30 slopes near Silverton that had slid.
There are specific steps you can take to protect yourself from being caught up in an avalanche: venturing out based on safety predicted in snow and weather forecasts, paying attention to conditions, traveling one-by-one across suspect slopes.
Despite better forecasting and safety equipment, the number of avalanche deaths and injuries nationwide keeps creeping up because people make decisions that don’t always make sense, Lou Dawson, the godfather of backcountry skiing in Colorado, told The Gazette in 2006.
In the avalanche business, this is known as “the human factor” — the trickiest variable.
For years, the avalanche community largely ignored the human factor. Experts focused on the physics of slides and on developing better rescue technology. But the number of annual avalanche deaths continued to rise nationwide, from four in 1955, to 14 in 1975, to 24 in 1995 to about 30 today.
So researchers started to recognize taming the human factor as the next step in avalanche safety.
But in trying to make sense of human behavior, researchers are confronted with a world of contradictions. The most striking is that people with advanced avalanche-safety training, who should know better, are statistically most likely to get buried.
Often, instructors conclude avalanche courses by saying “congratulations, you are now twice as likely to die in an avalanche.”
But why?
You have to know not only the mountains and snow and weather and how they interact, but yourself.
Dale Atkins, who has worked for the Colorado Avalanche Information Center for about 20 years, sees patterns in avalanche deaths across the country.
Yes, in most incidents, a weak layer of snow on steep slopes slid shortly after a storm.
But Atkins and other researchers noticed four distinct mental traps that led people into trouble:
Familiarity: believing an area where no slides have been seen in the past will continue to be safe. Almost 70 percent of deaths happen on familiar slopes.
Following the crowd: believing a slope which has been skied before is less likely to slide.
Commitment: dismissing or underplaying risks because of a previous assessment that conditions are safe, or because a lot of effort has been expended to reach a spot.
Powder fever: dismissing or underplaying risks because powder conditions are epic and a slope is untracked.
Spotting these behavior traps is one thing. Correcting them is another. And it may be the only way the number of avalanche victims decreases.
A detailed account of every avalanche accident is posted on the avalanche center’s website.
And teachers like Atkins are more apt to advise people to stop before they ski or snowmobile a dangerous slope and think, not about the possibility that they could die, but about how the death would affect the four people who care most about them.
“They think about their friends, their family. That usually opens their eyes to the true risk,” he said. “Sometimes you need to appeal to emotion to really reach people.”
Avalanche victims
• Taft Conlin, 13, of Eagle, was killed in an avalanche near Prima Cornice on Vail Mountain on Sunday.
• Christopher Norris, 28, of Evergreen, was killed in slide at Mary Jane at Winter Park on Sunday.
• A snowmobiler died following an avalanche near Buffalo Pass.
• Keith Ames, 43, died while skiing Burnt Mountain, just outside Snowmass Ski Area, on Jan. 18.
CLASSES
• Colorado Avalanche Information Center
• REI — Colorado Springs
• Colorado Mountain Club
• Friends of Berthod Pass
Slide Central
The Boulder-based Colorado Avalanche Information Center, the oldest avalanche-forecasting program in the nation, has for decades been forecasting slide potential for skiers, snowmobilers and Colorado Department of Transportation workers who maintain mountain passes.
Staffers use detailed weather and snowfall data, as well as meticulous backcountry field observations, to come up with daily forecasts ranging from low to extreme danger.
Avalanche conditions
Website: avalanche.state.co.us/index.php
Colorado Springs: 520-0020
Fort Collins: 970-482-0457
Summit County: 970-668-0600
Buena Vista: 719-395-4994
Durango: 970-247-8187
Aspen: 970-920-1664
Denver: 303-275-5360
PHOTO: Sue Ungvarsky, of Colorado Springs, used an avalanche transceiver to pinpoint a buried beacon in the snow during a training session for the El Paso County Search and Rescue Team in 2005. Gazette file
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