The Weather Notebook: Avalanche-2

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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton of the Weather Notebook.

Every year avalanches cause more than a dozen deaths in backcountry locations of the U.S. Predicting these deadly occurences takes a variety of knowlege. Technology plays a role in that but so do the eyes, ears and know-how of people, which Jeff Rice learned in a remote area of Utah.

As we hike up the mountain, the sun has caused conditions known as, encyclopedia snow. Heavy as encyclopedias on your skis and like an encyclopedia salesman, hard to get rid of. Bruce Tremper is the head of the Utah Avalanche Forecasting Center, which is run by the U.S. Forest Service. We're here to analyze the safety of the mountain. A recent snowfall has put a heavy layer of wet snow on top of an older, icy crust. A classic avalanche hazard.

BT: Just in the first few hundred yards you could feel how slabby the snow is. You know, ski pole goes in real hard at the top and then it kind of just falls away.

What that tells us is none too encouraging.

BT: Here, the ice layer, that's the old sun crust from before the storm. It's buried down quite a ways.

On average, more than twenty-four people are killed in the U.S. each year by avalanches. And to avoid becoming statistics ourselves we stick to more gradual slopes that are less likely to slide. And we check a few more areas before deciding to head down.

BT: So, you know I don't think things are totally safe out here. Not quite yet.

The snow is thick and hard to ski, but we make long sweeping turns. As we cut tracks some of the snow follows us, falling like huge cinnamon rolls down the hill, but on this day, at least, the avalanches stay quiet.

When not in the backcountry, correspondent Jeff Rice reports from Boise, Idaho. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.