A Plague of Avalanches
December 29th, 2008Posted in Skiing in the Tetons
Mother Nature is showing her crueler side this week in the Tetons. Day after day more snow arrives- usually a good thing, from a skiers perspective- but the rate at which it has fallen and the slippery icy/snowy mixture of previously fallen snow all the new snow’s massive weight rests upon, has produced a horrendously dangerous and unstabile snowpack that seems to defy the best efforts of ski patrols to neutralize.
This morning as the Jackson Hole Mountain Resorts ski patrol was working on triggering avalanches safely before they get too big and dangerous, and before the ski terrain was to be opened to the public, their efforts set loose an avalanche which plowed down from the Headwall ridge and struck the resort’s Couloir Restaurant building, damaging it and partially burying two or three ski patrollers (depending upon the news report one reads). Luckily the ski patrollers were quickly dug out and no one was killed. The resort, wisely, was then closed, except for two very low elevation lifts at the bottom of the mountain serving nearly flat terrain. Other avalanches occurred during the day within the resort’s boundaries, proving the wisdom of shutting down the mountain for the rest of the day.
What does a ski resort do when it’s mountain turns deadly? It may be a long night for the people in charge of decision making in Jackson’s management’s offices. Today the temperatures warmed considerably, adding another element of complication to the gumbo snowpack, and for tonight more snow is predicted. As I write, an extremely strong wind is howling outside, surely rearranging the tons of snow at higher elevations.
This week is prime time for ski resorts. The Christmas-New Years vacation period is extremely important to ski resort’s revenues. The resort has already suffered several days of limited operations due to the storms and the high avalanche danger. Along with the loss of revenue from lift ticket sales, the resort also loses vitally important food and ski lesson sales. These latter two are high profit revenue sources and their loss during a major vacation week has to be extremely painful for the resort.
The local paper recently reported that news of all the snow falling in the Tetons had perked up bookings for ski vacations, which was good news since bookings before this uptick had been down, probably due to the nation’s economic woes. As news of the danger, the inbounds avalanches, and the extensive terrain closures ripples out through the ski world, will the surge in bookings reverse as skiers decide not to risk their scarce vacation dollars on what they might consider to be too risky a snow situation? Does a ski resort that has a reputation that is already intimidating to many skiers want to have another reason for skiers to be scared away to other tamer resorts? And this is the year they just spent $30 million on their new tram, which has been mostly idle since it was opened to the public. Does anybody still want to be the owner of a ski resort?
Like an exciting novel you can’t put down, watching this winter unfold here in the Tetons has us in suspense. One unlucky skier has already died. Several ski patrollers have been caught in avalanches, but they were lucky enough to survive. The storms keep coming and conditions are possibly as dangerous as they have ever been. When we turn the page on a new day tomorrow morning, what will surprise us then? The stage has already been set because WYDOT has already announced the road across Teton Pass will be closed at 8 AM tomorrow morning so bombing from helicopters or howitzers will be attempted to reduce the avalanche danger threatening that vital road between Wyoming and Idaho. The resulting slides may close the road for several hours, or longer. What is interesting here is that under normal avalanche conditions, this type of preemptive work is usually done at 3 AM so the road can be cleared and open again by the time the heavy commuter traffic needs to use the road in the morning.
Tomorrow may prove very interesting. I just hope everyone stays safe and keeps out of harm’s way.
A Plague of Avalanches commented:
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