Gravity Works: Avalanche

Sunlight lanced from behind scudding clouds, shining for the first time in days. The mountains remained shrouded though, and I couldn’t see any avalanches from my window. Last time the weather cleared, I noticed the whole north ridge of Coon Basin had slid to the ground. Now I wonder what I’ll see next time it clears up.

Avalanche spotting is a hell of a lot safer from my living room, through the window, than it is out in the wind and snow and danger. If actually recreating in places where avalanches live, it is important to know what you’re doing and treat that stuff with respect. It’s killer.

I was saddened a couple of weeks ago when Mike Bowen got caught and killed in a slide. I didn’t know Mike well, but I used to pick him up when he was walking Slate River Road, returning from riding the chutes off Mt. Emmons. It would be almost dark, cold…whatever, and here would come Mike, walking along with his board slung behind his back. I would turn around and drive him to town, and he’d tell me how good it was out there, up there and over there.

I always wondered at how he had the cajones to ride the backcountry alone. I’d had singularly unpleasant backcountry experiences, and at the time, was glad as hell for my companions. Mike, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with winter solitude and seldom travelled with a friend. I didn’t know him well enough to say anything; if he wanted to do it alone, more power to him. I know lots of people who would rather ski alone than with a posse. I figured he knew what he was doing.

I think it is easy to take the backcountry for granted. It is all around us, it is our medium and our métier. The mountains define us and inform what we do; summer and winter, they are why we live here. We become familiar with the backcountry, and forget it is not familiar with us. We hike the same ridge or ski the same route over and over, and think we have it down. It’s under control. Nothing can happen. We take it for granted. Then things change.

My direct experience with avalanches is thankfully limited. Certainly it is not as dramatic and lurid as avalanches sweeping cameras away in ski movies. Even so, except for watching them on screen, avalanches are always dangerous and potentially deadly. Over the years, I’ve lost quite a few friends to avalanches, and acknowledge snow slides as a feature of our place. It is our job to stay out of them.

Nor do I intend to have any direct experiences with avalanches, at least not if I can help it. This does not mean I will hover behind the window, waiting to watch Coon Basin slide. It does mean that I won’t be out backcountry skiing until I deem the snowpack consolidated and safe. Deeming the snowpack safe, of course, is a judgment call, an interpretive exercise in which the price of misinterpretation can be costly.

So I’m going to cough up the price of an avalanche refresher course offered by Crested Butte Mountain Guides. It won’t be my first such course; I attended San Juan County Sheriff’s Department Avalanche School back in the 1970s. The tools were different, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Although I think they do the same job, avalanche prediction tools have been refined and become more sophisticated. You still have to observe relative densities in the snowpack and identify poorly bonded layers. You have to be able to spot a potential slide surface and integrate that information with aspect, terrain features and…well, the list goes on.

Rescue equipment has also evolved. Avalanche beacons or transceivers are more accurate and—hopefully—more user-friendly. Although my old Pieps still beeps when I turn it on, I’m told it is obsolete and that I’d best buy a new one. I griped about paying $350 for my new BCA Tracker until someone asked the obvious question: How much is my life worth? Damn, I hate questions like that.

Having shelled out all that money, though, I figure I’d better learn how to use the thing properly. Furthermore, what is the sense in hauling it up the hill if I can’t figure out how to use it in the urgency and adrenaline heat of an avalanche burial? Better go to school.

But a probe is still a probe and a shovel is still a shovel, and you still have to dig a snow pit. At least I think you do; that’s why I’m taking the refresher course, to find out for sure. But even then, properly trained or at least exposed to the information, I may still not venture out onto a snowpack I know from observation is sketchy. Call me timid, call me lightweight, call me whatever, but call me alive.

In acknowledging another friend lost to winter and avalanche, it is important to also recognize the men and women of Crested Butte Search and Rescue, and all others who worked hard in dark and dangerous conditions to rescue and, sadly, recover Mike Bowen. For those of us who enjoy winter, wilderness and all those tempting backcountry lines, it is good to know Search and Rescue is there.

Mike Bowen, I’ll wave at your spirit walking Slate River Road and know you had some fine turns out there, up there and over there. It is heartrending to lose a man who shares many of our common motivations, enraptured by cold smoke and gravity, deep in winter’s thrall.