Avoiding Early Season Avalanches

Nearly every winter season the story is the same; avalanche burials with often fatal consequence. I suppose it is somewhat late to be writing this now considering that it was just yesterday that a skier died in a slide in Little Cottonwood canyon, but I feel compelled to try and help shed some light on why this phenomenon is so common in an attempt to help others make better decisions in the backcountry.
A few common contributing factors why the early season can be so troublesome for human involved slides are as follows:

1) Weak Snow: During the early season snow can become very weak (hard to make a snowball with) due to the often thin cover on the ground and cool temperatures. When this snow is then snowed over again, the new snow on top can act as a slab which can fail and cause an avalanche either naturally or with the added weight of a skier. In the early season the preservation of weak snow is most common in shaded higher elevation areas; in Utah it is often most prevalant on northerly slopes above 9000’(though it can be problematic on all aspects, particularly at high elevations). The development of weak snow (faceted snow) becomes less likely the deeper the amount of snow on the ground becomes (with some exceptions) and the warmer the temperatures.

2) Scarcity: In the early season it is often very difficult to ski at all in areas where the snow isn’t the deepest. The deepest snow is often found in the same areas where preserved weak snow is found too, so the most skiing takes place in areas where the snowpack is at its weakest. Sometimes this phenomenon can last for several weeks or even through the winter in a cold and dry year; good quality skiing in the high northerly terrain and nearly impossible skiing through shrubs and rocks in all but those areas. All the skiers, snowboarders and other users want to use the same terrain and there simply is less real estate for the masses to use causing areas to get very tracked up at times. Inevitably people start entering steeper and more avalanche prone terrain the more tracked up an area becomes. Peoples comfort zones expand when they have no other reasonable options for getting pristine snow; regardless of the avalanche hazard.

3) Frenzy: At the start of the ski season people want the goods and they want it bad! Thinking becomes secondary to getting; people have been waiting all summer. Images of skiing epic powder crowd the brain often well before any desires to stop think and behave including remembering to bring and practice with the requisite backcountry avalanche safety gear. People are crazed for powder.

A word of advice: Take it slow and easy in the early season and show a bit of prudency and skepticism when evaluating ski terrain. Freshen up on avi safety skills, use the gear and act cautiously; this goes for the backcountry and inbounds. If you are skiing in steep terrain early in the season it is likely that it is in an area where there has been some weak snow present at one time or another. Deeply buried, faceted weak snow in this context can be very tricky to manage even for ski area patrols with explosives, at times resulting in falsely positive indications of stability (Bombs go off, nothing slides but it still may not be safe).This was the case twice in the last five years at Utah ski areas alone including inbounds slides at Snowbird and the Canyons resorts which both resulted in fatalities in OPEN ski terrain. If terrain is being opened for the first time of the season use EXTRA caution. Remember when the snowpack is thin, if it slides there is a higher likelihood of being battered by rocks too.

Moreover, use some common sense and live to ski another day!


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