Contemplating Avalanche
Published in Vermont Sports – Jan 2004
Photos and Story by Brian Mohr
Although snow avalanches in Vermont are largely restricted to the very steepest and confined gullies and glades, they do occur and they can change your life very quickly. Hardly a winter day goes by when I don’t think about avalanches here in New England. Maybe it has something to do with the eight years I spent skiing around nerve-racking unstable snow in the Colorado Rockies. Or perhaps it has to do with the many potentially dangerous powder avalanches I witness high up in the Green Mountains each year. Now that I think of it though, the real culprit is probably the enormous avalanche I witnessed within Mt. Washington’s Ammonoosuc Ravine back in April 2001.
A few friends and I had spent the morning skiing sweet corn snow in view of a cloud-strewn Mt. Washington. By noon, the warmest day yet had kicked snowmelt into high gear, forcing us off anything steep and exposed that could be undermined with water.. Making our way home by way of the mighty Ammonoosuc, we stayed high and away from the often tempting gullies that define the ravine. Stopping for lunch in a safe spot, we peered into Ammonoosuc’s main gully, filled to the brim with snow. Several large stress fractures stretched out across it, directly over the spot where a beautiful cascade pours in the spring. While munching on something equivalent to a PB&J, I watched water suddenly start to spurt and then pour from inside the lower-most crack. Before long, a good-sized stream was carving a path down the gully’s snowy surface.
At this point, we all knew that this thing was a time bomb waiting to blow. Snowmelt was coming off the mountain in such great quantities that it was going under, through and even over the snowpack on its way to the valleys. All at once, a winter’s worth of snow was being dangerously eroded. We skied home with the suspense of the gully lingering on the mountain behind us.
After a relatively cold night, we wandered back up into Ammonoosuc and soon discovered that sometime after we had left the day before, all hell had, in fact, broken loose. The entire main gully had released from the mountain and sent an enormous avalanche roaring into the forest over two thousand feet below. A debris pile of dislodged boulders, broken trees, stumps, ice and heavy snow stood nearly 20 feet tall and stretched for several hundred yards. We clambered up onto the debris, and looked in shock up into the ravine. All that remained was the rush of a cascading stream and the scoured outline of the towering gulley.
Several things flashed through my mind. What if an innocent snowshoer had decided to leave the trail leading up the ravine to follow some animal tracks into the woods below the gully? Or what if some unaware spring skier had missed the signs that we noticed (and expected) and decided to descend the dangerously unstable gully? We probably don’t want to know.
Although the Ammonoosuc avalanche we experienced was arguably catastrophic in magnitude, avalanches that are smaller, equally dangerous and much more difficult to predict do occur regularly throughout the northeast. Fortunately, the most avalanche prone terrain high up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the higher peaks of the Adirondacks and isolated spots in the Greens, as well as others, see relatively little traffic come winter and are ominous enough to keep most people out of trouble. Yet, as long as there as those who go unprepared into the mountains of the northeast in the winter, avalanche accidents will happen.
Consider the mayhem up in Tuckerman’s Ravine last November. Three parties climbing on top of one another; two guys plowing ahead into unstable snow; a sizeable slide is triggered and two people end up dead. What a shame. Although the media portrayed several of the climbers as “experienced,” the thorough investigation carried out by the U.S. Forest Service rangers reveals a different story. A few years earlier in the Adirondacks, an unsuspecting backcountry skier, tempted by a slope of untracked snow that was being undermined by recent rainfall, learned his lesson the hard way. He too, is no longer with us.
I should emphasize that the point of this story is not to instill fear in the minds of those among us who love to venture high up into the snowy mountains of the northeast, but rather, to encourage everyone to develop a greater understanding of the avalanche risks that exist. Being able to make conservative, and relatively accurate assessments of snowpack stability in the mountains should be just as important as remembering to bring along water, food and an extra layer of clothing. With time, you’ll find that it’s just as easy.
For starters, buy yourself one of the many excellent books addressing avalanche safety for mountain goers. My favorite is Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler’s Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard. It’s a postcard size book that you can travel with, and it uses lots of great photos and graphics to take you well-beyond the basics. I’m also a big fan of Tony Daffern’s Avalanche Safety for Skiers and Climbers.
Of course, there is no substitute for experience when it comes to feeling comfortable on steep, snow-covered terrain. A good way to develop some of that experience is by actively participating in a guided trip, heading for the mountains with friends that have more experience than you do, and by signing up for an avalanche safety class near you.
The Green Mountain Club (www.greenmountainclub.org) is hoping to sponsor a National Ski Patrol Level I Avalanche course this coming March, here in Vermont – call them for details (802-244-7037). The Appalachian Mountain Club (www.outdoors.org) will also be offering several basic avalanche awareness courses at their Pinkham Notch, N.H. Visitor’s Center in the White Mountains. Check them out! As for guided backcountry ski and mountaineering adventures that will foster greater avalanche awareness and hone your winter travel skills, contact local guide Jesse Williams of the Adirondack Mountain School in New York’s Keene Valley, www.adkmtnschool.com, or call him at 516-576-2242.
For now, think snow and have fun.
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