Being swept down a mountainside with an avalanche isn't anything like a wild ride at a theme park where the rider stands up at the end, smiles and waves at friends and family.
It is not fun, says Craig Gordon, avalanche forecaster/educator with the Utah Avalanche Center. What follows is Gordon's insight into avalanches.
It doesn't matter what you're riding when you break loose an avalanche — skis, snowboard, snowmobile, snowshoes — it's all the same thing.
When we're out we don't feel the difference in two, three or four degrees in slope angle, but avalanches are all over it. Does it matter what tracks are on the slopes? Of course not. An avalanche doesn't know who made the tracks, it just knows someone came along and irritated the snowpack, and it is making this (avalanche) cranky.
When an avalanche breaks loose, anyone caught is off for the ride of his or her life. You don't know which way is up or down. Maybe, in a corner of your eye for a split second, you see cracks propagating around you, and you're thinking this isn't good. You're thinking maybe I can outrun this thing, and you grab a fist full of throttle, but as you do you're caught and going 40 miles per hour in two or three seconds. You're knocked off your machine and thinking maybe I'll grab this tree on the way down. But, you're going 40 to 50 mph, now, which is like stepping outside your car and trying to grab a tree. It snaps off in your hand and off you go.
You get tumbled down this slope, slamming into rocks and getting wrapped around trees. When you get to the bottom, there's a one in four chance you'll die from getting beaten up in the avalanche.
Then, at this point, you will have to rely on your rescue party. There's no time for outside rescue help. You've got 15 minutes to live under the snow. Avalanche debris sets up like concrete in just a second or two, so you can't move. You can't help yourself.
Now the rescue party has got to get into gear. Statistically, we lose the ability to be found alive as time goes by.
That's why you've got to have an avalanche beacon, shovel and probe when going in the backcountry. And you've got to wear this stuff on your body. You've got to wear a beacon under the coat and either put the shovel on a pack or hook it around your shoulders. If it's under the seat or hood of a machine, and you are separated, then you're separated from the rescue gear.
The shovel, beacon and probe are like the airbag in your car — they are things you don't want to use but are happy to have if there is an accident.
And once you have the gear, you've got to practice and practice often.
(There are six beacon training parks in Utah where people can go and practice for free. They are located in the western Uintas, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, The Canyons and in the Manti-LaSal Mountains at the top of Fairview Canyon.)
It doesn't take a giant avalanche to kill us. Just a couple of feet of snow can trap a person.
When search and rescue personnel are called in, it's usually because the person buried doesn't have rescue gear. But it takes us a long time to get to a site. Search and rescue dogs get a lot of coverage, but usually it's after the fact. It takes awhile to get rescue dogs to the scene, much longer than 15 minutes.
And who triggers avalanches? We do.
When people go into the backcountry, they need to know what to look for and avoid avalanche areas.
Typical avalanche terrain is steep and has no trees.
With slopes less than 30, there is no gravitational tug on the snowpack. Slopes steeper than 50 degrees are constantly avalanching. And where do we usually play? On slopes between 35 and 45 degrees, and that's where slab avalanches occur, and it is slab avalanches that kill us.
And remember, if you can ride or slide through the trees, avalanches can go through the trees and those trees become 50 and 60 foot baseball bats as you pinball down the mountain.
One of the biggest clues to avalanche danger is an avalanche. If you see an avalanche on the same kind of slope, with the same angle, same elevation and facing the same direction, then you know there's a problem.
And you should start thinking that this isn't where I want to hang out and maybe this isn't the day to go snowmobiling.
And remember, avalanches are a lot like people. They don't like drastic changes and actually get cranky when they go through rapid changes, such as temperature and snow load.
And an avalanche doesn't know if you're local or a hot rider or that it's the best powder day of the year. And, unfortunately, avalanches don't know that we've got to get home at the end of the day.