Two weeks ago we previewed the Burning Dog Pray for Snow Party in Missoula, a fund-raiser for the West Central Montana Avalanche Foundation.

Well, the dog got burned. (And snow arrived!) Skiers and snowboarders quaffed Big Sky brews while chipping in to promote backcountry safety.

The foundation operates the MissoulaAvalanche.org Web site and provides up to $10,000 to the Forest Service for additional forecasting. Fund-raising efforts have allowed for the purchase of three avalanche beacon training facilities at Lolo Pass, Lost Trail Ski Area and Montana Snowbowl. Last year the foundation and avalanche center interacted with nearly 1,300 students in a variety of settings, from middle school to Level-1, AAA-certified courses in avalanche safety. The foundation’s long-term goal is to have a seven-day-a-week center that is putting out the most up-to-date information available.

This is what the dog looked like before the party.

Burn, baby, burn! And, as always, Know Before You Go.

The West Central Montana Avalanche Foundation presents the third annual Burning Dog Pray for Snow Party and Fund-Raiser, set for 6 p.m. Friday at the Big Sky Brewery Amphitheater in Missoula, Mont.

The festival is an evening of fun and entertainment to celebrate the impending winter and raise money for avalanche education and forecasting. The party will feature the Montana premiere of Powder Whores’ new ski film, Flakes, and music from Places and headliner Gift of Gab. The night will end with the annual burning of the 40-foot-tall Powder Hound Dog.

Vendors from the Missoula area will be offering food, discounted lift tickets, a sneak peek at this year’s hottest backcountry gear and Big Sky Brewing’s famous locally brewed beers. Door prizes and raffle giveaways will include $2,000 worth of Cloudveil clothing, an avalanche transceiver and tons of other great backcountry gear.

All proceeds will benefit the West Central Montana Avalanche Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to avalanche education and forecasting. Visit the foundation online at www.missoulaavalanche.org.

He is the first to drop in on this particular face, and after a few turns it becomes a firsthand view of every backcountry skier’s worst nightmare. We see the camera look down and fissuring starts to propagate, then the skier is riding with the slab and engulfed in snow. The view is then all moving snow, light and dark without bearings, until the snow settles into an eerie, still blue light.

Avalanche Skier POV Helmet Cam Burial & Rescue in Haines, Alaska

At this point you are gripped to this static screen, feeling a little queasy in your stomach, and all you hear is the crinkling of gear as the skier rapidly breathes. There is an occasional squeaking that the writer of the article attributes to the skier trying to swallow to clear his throat for air, since his Avalung was only half in his mouth. I think it sounds a little like the kazoo noise my Avalung itself makes on occasion, but fortunately, I have only ever tested this above ground.

Watching this, you become acutely aware of your own breathing, and the stillness. It seems like an eternity, but in reality, it is a fantastic rescue. There are voices heard after just a couple minutes and then consistent voices are close. After only about four minutes, you hear voices talking to the skier directly and you know he has been found. Finally, the snow is removed from the camera and the shot is looking directly up at the guide and fellow skiers who are digging him out. There is relief and excitement in the noises the skier is making, though if there were words, they were inaudible.

It does, again, seem an eternity as he is being dug out and the skier initially is barely moving his hands, which are in the lowest part of the shot. I felt such a strong attachment to the skier by this point that I was actually straining in my own mind to move the hands on the screen.

By any standards it was an efficient rescue, well under five minutes from the time the slide started, barely four minutes from burial. The text states that the rescue was aided by locating a glove on top of the snow that the skier had lost. From the video, we also can see it was a shallow burial. Truly everything went right for this rescue, but that was just after everything went wrong.

(Slides on Cody and No Name peaks south of Jackson Hole resort. Photo © Jim Stanford)

We all know that our mountain games come with danger. Danger is exhilarating in moderation and horrifying in abundance. It is a part of the equation as we choose how to spend our days, our weeks, our lifetime. We tell ourselves that more people will be injured on the highway to the trailhead than in the backcountry on any given day, and we take precautions. But the bottom line is that there are no guarantees. If we allow ourselves to be totally honest, if there were no danger component at all, we might find another place to play.

A few years ago, I bought my first motorcycle. Before I bought the bike, I took the Utah Rider’s Safety course, mostly so that if I were ever in a wreck, I wouldn’t be part of that annoying statistic that says, “over 90% of injured riders never had formal instruction or a safety course.” Most of the course was pretty basic and just a review of things I knew from riding previously, but I did enjoy the part of a classroom session when the instructor asked, “As a rider, how can you make motorcycle riding safe?” People started offering all kinds of ideas about helmets, following safety guidelines, watching traffic around you, etc.

After letting this go for a minute or two, the instructor revealed that it was a trick question. You CANNOT make riding a motorcycle safe. We all sat and thought about that for a minute and realized she was right. You are exposed and unprotected on a motorcycle in a way that you are not when driving a car, and what might be a scrape or “fender bender” in a car can have grave consequences on a motorcycle. A squirrel running across the road at the wrong moment could put you in the hospital, or worse.

(Mike Varilone in the white room. Photo © Jim Stanford)

Playing in the backcountry has similar elements that you just cannot make safe. You can take actions to moderate the risk, but you can’t eliminate it. We all understand this at some level, but seeing this video really brought home the fine line between a great day in the backcountry and your last day. I take it as a reminder to be vigilant about doing the things I can control to make my days safer. Follow the snowpack through the season and check the avy reports every time you go into the backcountry. Dig pits and make sure your gear is functioning properly. Practice with your gear. Make sure all your gear is with you every time.

A friend told me that as a kid, his mother used to have a song for him and his siblings about the gear you need for inbounds skiing to make sure nobody got up to the resort and didn’t have their gloves or poles. Come up with some similar mnemonic for your backcountry stuff and visually confirm you have everything with you each time. Grabbing your pack because “it’s all in there” is a bad habit; take 30 seconds and unzip the pack to make sure. Life is full of routines, and forming good routines about safety may make the difference for you or one of your skiing partners.

Most of the time everything goes right, and this makes us a little confident. Confidence is slippery, though, and can relax you and take you out of your good habits. I joke with friends about the “Four C’s” of descending on a mountain bike: Caution – Confidence – Cocky – Crash. There’s plenty of room for the exhilaration the mountains provide and we all get to swallow our fair share of danger, but if we pass into the cocky realm it’s easy to miss or not be prepared for the danger that will then swallow us.

Mark Scholl, M.D., is a Cloudveil Inspired Mountain Ambassador and an orthopedic surgeon. He is a team physician to ReAL Salt Lake of the MLS, the U.S. Ski Team and Solitude Mountain Resort. He is an ultrarunner, backcountry skier and amateur snow science geek.

With Winter 08/09 already off to an auspicious start in terms of avalanche fatalities, this incident serves as a case study in evaluating terrain hazard and is remarkable that all three survived with one member of the group being buried 6 – 7 feet deep. And they did not use any beacons; each member of the party was recovered through voice communication.

Most of the quick accounts were off-base factually, so it’s helpful now to have this official report.

The party was near the red X when they triggered the avalanche. The avalanche carried Skier-1 and Boarder-2 downslope, and they were buried near the blue circle. Boarder 3 was swept into the trees near the yellow circle. buried in the cluster of trees at the center of the photo.

Avalung, anyone?

Penn Newhard is a partner at Backbone Media, which represents Cloudveil, Black Diamond and many many other outdoor-related companies and products.

As a PSA from the warmth of my room, I thought I’d post this afternoon’s Bridger-Teton National Forest Western Wyoming Avalanche Bulletin just in case there are some local readers out there who don’t get it.

Happy New Year, everyone. Be safe out there!

Issued on Thursday January 1 at 5:59 p.m.

SITUATION

AN AVALANCHE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED BY THE BRIDGER-TETON NATIONAL FOREST FOR THE MOUNTAINOUS AREAS OF WESTERN WYOMING INCLUDING JACKSON HOLE AND STAR VALLEY

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT provided by the Teton County Sheriff’s Department.

During these times of significant avalanche danger, the Sheriff’s Office and Search and rescue would like to remind you that backcountry rescues may be significantly delayed or not possible.

What does this mean to you?

1. A simple broken leg on Teton Pass could mean hours of delay until Search and Rescue can access you with reasonable safety.

2. If you are caught in an avalanche in the backcountry of Teton County, a recovery may not occur until conditions warrant.

The higher elevations of Western Wyoming received about one foot of new snow today. This snowfall was accompanied by 30 to 40 mile per hour winds from the west-southwest that gusted to 66 miles per hour. Temperatures at 9,000 feet started in the teens and rose towards the 20’s as the day ended.

New soft surface slabs up to 18 inches in depth began to form today on wind packed snow and melt-freeze crusts. Deep slab instabilities persist. A dangerous hard slab (HS-AB-5-0-6’) was explosively triggered in the Far Drift Slide Path at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort this morning during avalanche hazard reduction efforts. This large destructive slide failed on a buried rain crust from a southeasterly facing starting zone at an elevation of 10,000 feet and ran full track.

FORECAST FOR Friday January 02, 2009

A strong winter storm will continue to bring moderate to heavy snowfall to the region. The heaviest snowfall will likely occur around midday on Friday and into Friday afternoon as a cold front approaches. Very strong southwest winds will continue and cause whiteout conditions. Temperatures will slowly warm overnight and enough warm air may move in ahead of the cold front to cause areas of rain or a rain and snow mixture in some valley locations.

The general avalanche hazard will be HIGH*. Large new snow slab avalanches up to three feet in depth and dangerous deep slab avalanches up to eight feet in depth are likely to release naturally or be triggered by humans. Large, destructive avalanches could run full track. TRAVEL IN AVALANCHE TERRAIN IS NOT RECOMMENDED.

TREND FOR SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

The snow will taper off late Friday night as bitter cold air moves in. By Saturday valley temperatures could drop to 15 to 25 degrees below zero. The avalanche hazard is expected to slowly decrease.

———————————————————————————————-
Extreme: Wide spread areas of unstable snow exist and avalanches are certain on some slopes.
Backcountry travel should be avoided.

*High: Mostly unstable snow exists on a variety of aspects and slope angles.
Natural avalanches are likely. Travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended.

Considerable: Dangerous unstable slabs exist on steep terrain on certain aspects. Human triggered avalanches probable. Natural avalanches possible.

Moderate: Areas of unstable snow exist. Human triggered avalanches are possible. Larger triggers may be necessary as the snowpack becomes more stable. Use caution.

Low: Mostly stable snow exists. Avalanches are unlikely except in isolated pockets.
———————————————————————————————-

For further information call 307-733-2664. To report an avalanche observation call 307-739-2607 or email us at avalanche@jacksonhole.com.

It’s a cheap date, a $5.00 donation at the door supports Teton County Search and Rescue and gets you access to the best local avalanche information you can find.  Rod Newcomb will give his annual update on the present (lack of) snowpack and what that layer might mean later in the season.  Jim Woodmency will discuss weather and its impacts on avalanche conditions, and Mike Rheam and Bob Comey will update you on your Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center.  John Griber will close out the evening with what is sure to be an excellent multi-media presentation on his recent expedition to Gasherbrum II.

If you’d like to look at the 10 year history by activity, go to http://www.nwac.us/education_resources/statistics/us_avi_fatal_by_activity_from_1997.htm

I was sad to hear that the number still continues to be high, especially considering articles I’d read that say education of backcountry travelers is increasing. Part of the increase is undoubtedly due to the power of modern snowmobiles and the access to dangerous terrain that they now provide. And the overall popularity of earning your turns has had an impact as well, the more people out there doing it, the higher the probability of accidents.

As I was lamenting the high numbers and looking into it a little bit more, I saw another article that said ATV accident deaths were at an all time high. Ok, that makes sense, big powerful machines that require little or no training to purchase and use. The numbers were shocking. 2,620 ATV related deaths since 2003, not including the 2007 numbers which had yet to be released by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. In the article I read the estimates for 2007 are in the 600 range. Over 3,000 people in 5 years, and over one third of those deaths were children under 16 as reported by the CPSC.

Those statistics to me weren’t just unbelievable, but kind of ridiculous. If I were an ATV manufacturer I’d probably take a small amount of the millions I spend to lobby congress to keep ATV’s free and dangerous, and put a little money into safety and consumer awareness. I spent some time as a kid ripping around the McCullough Peaks outside of Cody on a motorcycle, so I’m no treehugging hiker. But you can damn well be sure that my kids are getting their first alpine touring setup long before the conversation turns to romping around in an ATV.

Seems as if every ski hill has it’s fair share of these Darwin-approved tourons. According to a blog post here, these are two Texan teenagers that cut a closure rope and caused a big slide, sweeping one of them over a bad cliff band. Yikes!

Everybody remember to play safe, be aware of avalanches and if there’s a rope there telling you not to go there, it might be in your best interest to not. go. there.

Avalaunch is a festival that might just save a life by getting snowriders to think twice about how they ride in the backcountry as well as how they impact the earth and the future of snowriding. A percentage of all proceeds will go to benefit the avalanche centers for each festival community. For more info, go check out www.avalaunchfest.com.

Tickets available for $25 at the Cloudveil Retail store located at 120 West Pearl across from Pearl Street Bagels.