Vol. 30, No. 3, February 2012

the avalanche review

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First Annual Eastern Snow & Avalanche Workshop Wows Capacity Crowd Story by Jonathan S. Shefftz

❒ Snow? Check. ❒ Mountains with above-treeline terrain? Check. ❒ Avalanches? Check. ❒ Avalanche fatalities? Check (unfortunately). ❒ USFS forecast center? Check. ❒ Avalanche safety courses affiliated with NSP, AIARE, AAA, and even CAA? Check.

❒ Professional AMGA mountain guides? Check. ❒ Multi-agency and volunteer SAR teams? Check. So what’s missing from this picture of the northeastern avalanche scene? Despite all the essential ingredients, we have never held a one-day regional version of an ISSW, though such events are popular in other regions of the country with avalanche terrain. That situation was corrected this year by the collaborative efforts of USFS Mount Washington Avalanche Center Lead Snow Ranger Chris Joosen and AAA Eastern Representative Kyle Tyler. The first Eastern Snow & Avalanche Workshop (ESAW) was held November 5 in North Conway, New Hampshire, at our generous host facility, the Mount Washington Observatory Weather Discovery Center. Such a continuing education and communitybuilding event certainly had strong demand, as half the initially planned 75 attendee limit was reached

Hi All – ESAW is over – Success! 85 folks registered and attended – turned away 40. Broad spectrum of great talks. Stayed on schedule to the min – lucky?? Gave out a lot of raffles, including 10 subscriptions to TAR!! and 7 copies of SWAG – reinvesting. Outstanding positive response from all about the program. Great questions from the attendees. Sam Colbeck repeated his 2000 ISSW talk about Sintering of Unequal Grains in Snow. Sam has agreed to be filmed at CRREL in Hanover; he will repeat that talk – our copy of him at ESAW didn't come out good enough to send out. Plenty of beer and vendors at the social. Thanks to all for the AAA grant – will send out an expense report.

Kyle Tyler is the Eastern Rep to the AAA board and one of the ESAW organizers. Congratulations to him and all the hardworking organizers on a great first year. R

within a few hours of an email announcement, and the event capacity was met only five days later. The final tally was 85 attendees, with about half again that many on the wait list. The $45 registration fee was supplemented by a $500 grant from the American Avalanche Association, and proceeds over and above the hosting costs went to the White Mountain Avalanche Education Fund to educate children in the northeast about avalanches. Like similar workshops, presentations appealed to a mix of snow professionals and enthusiastic recreationists. Chris Joosen kicked off the event with a discussion of spatial variability in NH’s direct-action avalanche regime. Our avalanche climate is best characterized as Arctic maritime: very high winds (such as the longtime record-holding 231mph gust in1934) scour broad, above-treeline fetch zones to load steep glacial cirques. Deeply buried instabilities are rare (and often quickly “paved over” by brutal thaw-refreeze events), while only several meters can separate deadly wind slab from no snow at all. Next was Jim Giglinto, a New York state forest ranger for the Department of Environmental Conservation in the Adirondack High Peaks. Although almost entirely below treeline, the ‘Dacks have very thin soil, and hence are prone to massive summertime landslides down to bedrock. These paths offer excellent backcountry skiing routes – with 16 more recently created by Hurricane Irene’s 13" of rain – but also allow for wintertime snow avalanches. With the geographic stage set, three heavy duty snow-science presentations ensued: propagation propensity of persistent weak layers by Kyle Tyler (who studied snow science at Montana State University with some of the field’s iconic figures), upslope snow development and effects by Rebecca Scholand (a Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist who was brave enough to confess to this gathering that she doesn’t care about snow after it falls on the ground!), and snow physics by Sam Colbeck (retired from the US Army’s Cold Region Research and Engineering Laboratory after three decades of groundbreaking cold lab research in snow-crystal bonding). Joosen lightened the tone with a presentation on social media and other human factors involved in avalanches in the northeast (including Facebooktriggered rescues). After the final of the four raffles from our many sponsors (including 10 TAR subscriptions), Mammut representative Eric Siefer showed off the

top: The gear raffle, held post-event at International Mountain Equipment, raised money for youth avalanche education. above: Mammut rep Eric Siefer sets up his son Cole with the Mammut airbag pack.  Photos by David Lottman

latest in avalanche safety technology, including a deployment of the new Mammut airbag pack. Your faithful correspondent wrapped up the event with a version of his April 2011 TAR article on assigning pre-course homework to Level 1 students. Afterward, ESAW adjourned down the street to our second host, International Mountain Equipment, for socializing, vendor displays, and a BCA airbag pack deployment. With strong attendance, strong presenters, and a strong sense of community development, the only complaint was that we should have held ESAW in prior years! But we all look forward to continuing our new annual tradition. Jonathan Shefftz lives with his wife and mondopoint-size-13 daughter (still too small for “Tech”-compatible ski touring boots) in western Massachusetts, where he patrols at Northfield Mountain and Mount Greylock. He is an AIARE-qualified instructor, NSP avalanche instructor, and AAA affiliate member. When not searching out elusive freshies in southern New England, he works as a financial economics consultant and has been qualified as an expert witness in federal agency Administrative Court, US District Court, and state courts. He can be reached at [email protected]. R

PitPod: Another New Snow App for iPhone Imagine… You see an avalanche, ski over to the crown, and pull out your iPhone. Snap a photo, measure the slope angle and aspect, then record a crown profile – all on your phone. While descending the path, use your phone as GPS to map the slide. At the toe of the slide send a diagram of the crown and a map of the slide to colleagues back at the office, then post it on Facebook to alert the public. With PitPod you can do all that and more, plus it’s free. PitPod, a new iPhone and iPod touch application for recording snowpits and avalanches, is now available for free on the iTunes store. PitPod is a digital snow and avalanche field book. The app was developed to easily enter snow and avalanche data in the field, then electronically share that data. PitPod uses all those fancy features on your iPhone to make this as easy as possible. It has all the features an avalanche professional would want, yet it is simple enough to be used by backcountry skiers – even snowboarders. Screen shots of some of the PitPod features. PitPod can be configured in different modes for varying amounts of data collection. In scientist mode it supports all the fields in SWAG, with all the grain types and sub-types, and metric units. In basic mode it only asks for the most essential weather data, and features just the major grain types and US units. It can be configured anywhere in between these two extremes. PitPod includes clinometer, GPS, and compass support so you can accurately measure and mark your field sites. PitPod is designed to be used in the field; there is no need for a WiFi or cell signal. Most inputs are multiple choice to eliminate the need for typing, and the buttons are big for use with cold fingers. PitPod produces professional quality snowpit diagrams in the standard format as well as a compact format for display on mobile devices, and it saves diagrams as an image or PDF file. Other export formats include KML maps of avalanches, CAAML xml, and SnowPilot format. PitPod can upload to Facebook, and it can even print. PitPod can also import CAAML v5 snow profiles so you can load data from other software for viewing in the field. For more information see PitPod.net or search for PitPod on the iTunes App store. Contact: Jesse Crocker, [email protected], 707-292-4042.   R

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the avalanche review

Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop Includes Presenters from the Northeast & Beyond Story by Jonathan S Shefftz The second annual Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop (ESAW) was held November 10 in North Conway, NH, near the base of Mount Washington in the Presidential Range. This year’s ESAW was once again a collaborative effort between Mount Washington Avalanche Center Lead Snow Ranger Chris Joosen and AAA Eastern Representative Kyle Tyler. The workshop had a strong attendance of 85, even despite a two-thirds increase in the registration fee to bring in speakers from outside the region. The $75 per-attendee registration fee was supplemented with a $500 grant from the American Avalanche Association, and registration fee proceeds over and above the hosting costs went to the White Mountain Avalanche Education Fund to educate children in the northeast about avalanches. As with similar workshops in other regions, the presentations appealed to a mix of snow professionals and enthusiastic recreationists. Chris started off the event by promising that the presentations would not merely be lecturing at us, but would include some topics just for fun and sheer interest. He reflected that breakthroughs in snow safety do not occur overnight; often a seemingly obscure topic at the International Snow and Science Workshop will develop into a major innovation years later. Eric Lutz, a PhD snow scientist with the Dartmouth College Glaciology Group, explained the art and science of snow penetrometry, which he described at the onset as essentially just poking around in the snow. He then took us from the earliest such examples as documented at SkiPoleHistory.com from about 6000 years ago, to the ramsonde in the 1930s, the resistograph in the 1960s, the digital resistograph in the 1980s, and the SnowMicroPen in the 1990s. Julie LeBlanc explained her work as a forecaster with the avalanche center in Quebec’s Haute-Gaspésie (AKA the Chic-Chocs), the only avalanche forecast center east of the Rockies other than our own Mount Washington. She provided background on the surprisingly deadly history of mainly non-recreationist avalanches in Quebec, with 73 fatalities since 1825. For example, a 1999 avalanche took nine lives in a native village. The initiative for an avalanche center for skiing touring in the Gaspé Peninsula did not start until 1999, and the first public bulletin was issued in 2002 – perhaps the only bilingual avalanche bulletin in North America. Outreach to school children is extensive, to 185 students in its first year in 2012, and aiming to reach 500 in 2013. Incidentally, Julie’s Québécois accent contrasted nicely to the American male presenters! Chris Joosen moderated a panel discussion on wet-snow avalanches with USFS snow ranger Brian Johnston and two presenters from other sessions. Our dense winter windslabs and crusts are less susceptible to the springtime wet slides typical of other avalanche climates. However, the danger of relying on generalities was reinforced by a picture of a wet slide blowout in Tuckerman Ravine with 30' high flanks! So as with any avalanche climate, the specifics in play that day trump any general season-long tendencies. Next were five sessions packed into a single hour, including snow ranger Jeff Lane summarizing various researchers’ weather and snow-related research projects in the Northeast (adding the word “ecogeomorphological” to our vocabularies), Eric Lutz on climate change’s effect on snowpack and hydrology, NY Department of Environmental Conservation Adirondack High Peaks ranger Jim Giglinto on the first winter’s experience with the new landslide paths created by Hurricane Irene, Blase Reardon on the operations of his Sawtooth Avalanche Center (which includes a surprising extent of avalanche terrain for non-recreationists), and finally Eric Lutz and Chris Joosen on use of the avalanche tiltboard for educating school-age students. Yes, all of this material could have easily been expanded into an entire day’s worth of sessions! After lunch, Blase Reardon took us on a “Journey to the Inner Mind” with how an avalanche forecaster thinks about avalanche safety. His primary advisory goal is to communicate the “one to two ways people are most likely to die” and also define appropriate terrain with travel advice. Blase emphasized the lesser uncertainty about what constitutes the avalanche problem as opposed to the far more uncertain probability of triggering. As an example he focused on wind slab versus deep slab, highlighting the differences between the two for both predictability and consequences. Blase however went far beyond how a forecaster thinks about avalanches, into really how we should all think about avalanche safety, drawing on everything from the latest insights in the field of behavioral economics to the hand-washing checklist we had all just noticed in the boys’ room in our elementary school host. Avalanche safety previously was centered on the Go/No-Go decision paradigm, with the goal that more information and education help backcountry skiers in

Vol. 31, No. 3, February 2013

left: At the post-ESAW social hour, Sam Colbeck, retired avalanche scientist from CRREL, visits with Eric Lutz, who, in addition to his many other hats, reviews applications for AAA research grants. TAR wants to know what Sam is talking about. photo by Blase Reardon below: The obligatory social hour (and then some) featured an airbag deployment by Jimmy Surrette. photo by Bob Taylor

their roles as rational decision-makers. But in reality, the human relationship with risk is far more complicated, and the divided self has many competing functions. Risk assessments are often far from rational or objective, and fatal accidents occur amidst many obvious warning signs. Furthermore, the backcountry snowpack does not provide a consistent environment with regular feedback, but rather its feedback is inconsistent and often fatal. (Remember Bruce Tremper’s analogy of playing soccer in a mine field.) “Experts” are often just those who have gotten lucky over time, just like many stock pickers who have beaten the market over a selected time period. How to discipline oneself in such an environment? Minimize the number of decisions, thereby allowing fewer opportunities to make mistakes. This applies even to just packing for a ski tour (especially for a groggy avalanche forecaster heading out early in the morning). Another example: put the skin track in the right place every time, regardless of stability conditions, and just rule out some skin tracks no matter what you think the stability might be that particular day. Focus on what kind of information you can know with more accuracy, more certainty, and more often. Strive to obtain feedback from good partners and from notes, i.e., yourself. And remember, the more definitions you have for a successful ski tour, the more likely you are to survive (as opposed to always wanting to ski steep powder). Blase described his avalanche courses as somewhat of a bait-and-switch: students want to learn about snow, but really he teaches them about…themselves. And indeed this presentation was similar in that we expected a journey to the inner mind of an avalanche forecaster, but he instead took us on a journey into our own minds. Jesse Williams, who obtained his IFMGA pin this past season and guides for his own Cloudsplitter Mountain Guides, presented on avalanche terrain in New York’s Adirondacks, focusing on a guide’s methodology for recognizing and avoiding hazard, which includes slope-scale forecasting. Although almost entirely below treeline, the ‘Dacks have very thin soil, and hence are prone to massive summertime landslides down to bedrock. These paths offer excellent backcountry skiing routes – with 16 more created last September by Hurricane Irene’s 13" of rain – but also allow for winter snow avalanches. As Jesse noted while addressing the critical issue of whether a slope can avalanche, if a slope can’t even hold onto its own trees, then it can’t hold onto its snow either. Jesse also emphasized slope-scale forecasting in his guide to terrain selection and stability evaluation. Sam Colbeck, who retired from the US Army’s Cold Region Research and Engineering Laboratory after three decades of groundbreaking cold lab research in snow-crystal bonding, explained (to the extent we could understand) some technical snow physics. And finally, USFS snow ranger Jeff Lane described recent developments in avalanche-safety equipment, highlighting his likes and dislikes. Interspersed throughout the day, prizes donated by our sponsors were raffled off. Prize donors included American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education, Backcountry Access, Backcountry Magazine, Cyberspace Avalanche Center, Genuine Guide Gear, GU Sports, Off-Piste Magazine, Ortovox, Rab, SmartWool, Smith Optics, Toko, and Voile. ESAW finally adjourned down the street to our second host, International Mountain Equipment, for socializing amidst vendor displays from Backcountry Access, Black Diamond, Genuine Guide Gear, La Sportiva, and Petzl. Jonathan Shefftz lives with his wife and mondopoint-size 15 daughter (still too small for “Tech”-compatible ski-touring boots) in western Massachusetts, where he patrols at Northfield Mountain and Mount Greylock. He is an AIARE-qualified instructor, NSP avalanche instructor, and AAA governing board member. When he is not searching out elusive freshies in southern New England, he works as a financial economics consultant and has been qualified as an expert witness in federal agency administrative court, US Turns out the author’s daughter wasn’t just messing around with a ski pole last winter, but District Court, and state courts. He can be was engaging in snow penetrometry. photo by Jonathan Shefftz reached at [email protected].  R

Vol. 32, No. 3, February 2014

the avalanche review

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Presenter Tim Brown discusses subtleties in interpreting the avalanche problems.

Third Annual ESAW Story by Jonathan S. Shefftz • Photos by Brian Irwin Media The third-annual Eastern Snow & Avalanche Workshop was held in North Conway, NH, near the base of Mount Washington in the Presidential Range. This year’s ESAW was once again a collaborative effort between members of the USFS Mount Washington Avalanche Center – led by Chris Joosen – and members of the American Avalanche Association, led by AAA Eastern Representative Kyle Tyler. A record attendance of 145 filled the entire gym of our host, the John H. Fuller Elementary School. This year’s registration fee was supplemented with a $500 grant from the AAA, and registration fee proceeds over and above the hosting costs went to the youth-oriented White Mountain Avalanche Education Fund. As with similar workshops in other regions, the presentations appealed to the attendee mix of snow professionals and enthusiastic recreationists. This year’s program started with Rebecca Scholand, a Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist. In her 2011 presentation on up-slope snow development, Rebecca remarked that she didn’t care about snow after it falls on the ground. But since then, backcountry skiing has drawn her into our avalanche community, and her presentation covered a number of resources and protocols for improving our avalanche-related weather observations. Ben Woodward, chief ranger of Maine’s Baxter State Park and its Mount Katahdin, provided attendees with an alpine tour of that area, exploring the ramifications of the limited winter road access and the challenges of self rescue (a sharp contrast to NH’s Presidentials). Bob Baribeau, from Mahoosuc Search and Rescue, summarized how Katahdin’s “Tableland” snow farm loads up on the technical ice climbing routes and summer hiking trails, so avalanche risk is not exclusive to skiers seeking powder. With a limited number of on-site park rangers, long approaches, and only a weekend and holiday presence of formal rescue groups, self rescue is often the only option (a rarity in the Northeast). Bob noted that the average visitor now has more technical gear than common sense. Although he sees more avalanche rescue gear among climbers, Bob also sees parties cutting down on time devoted to information gathering. Both of these presentations tied in nicely with the prior presentation on the importance of weather observations. Doug Richmond, sporting a “Big Green” cap from his nearby alma mater Dartmouth College, assessed human behavior at the ski area boundary. Informed by his many years as the Bridger Bowl ski patrol director, Doug provided a historical overview of some of the changes affecting the management of backcountry ski areas. According to Doug, a 1970s federal ordinance legally sealed off the ski area boundary. The legal status has since changed, as has interest in out-of-bounds skiing and the prevalence of ski-touring gear. Doug’s “favorite” incident included a helmet-cam video of a skier whose partner is avalanched, then takes out his beacon in order to review the back of the housing for the instructions on how to conduct a search. A series of short sessions started with Julie LeBlanc, who updated us on her presentation from last year on the avalanche forecast center in Quebec’s Haute-Gaspesie (aka Chic Chocs), the only avalanche forecast center east of the Rockies other than our own Mount Washington. (Once again, her Québécois accent contrasted nicely with a bunch of American male presenters!) Roger Damon, who has been teaching National Ski Patrol avalanche-safety courses at Mount Washington since the mid-1960s, presented an update of his earlier ISSW paper on Eastern ski resort avalanches. Our ski resorts’ natural snowfall and typically scouring winds, further combined with high skier density, almost never allow for natural snow avalanches. Yet our snowmaking prowess can also make…avalanches. A December 2002 avalanche at 750' Holiday Valley (near Buffalo, NY) left a 2.1m crown, representing a crown face almost exactly 1% of the entire resort vertical drop – perhaps some sort of record? And preparations for the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics were evocative of a Monty Python scene:

Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.

For the downhill race course, Whiteface Mountain blew a massive amount of snow onto bare ground. Subsequently, the slope avalanched into the woods, leaving bare ground. In response, the ski area below another massive amount of snow with the same result: another avalanche into the woods, leaving behind bare ground. Fortunately the third try was not another strike! Last year, Dr Eric Lutz, a snow scientist with the Dartmouth College Glaciology Group, explained the art and science of snow penetrometry, taking us from the ramsonde in the 1930s to the SnowMicroPen in the 1990s. This year, Brint Markle, with his fellow MIT whizzes at their AvaTech Safety startup, took workshop participants into the next era. Brint asked us to imagine sticking a sectional probe into the snow and immediately transmitting a complete hardness profile to your phone, which would then be uploaded to a crowd-sourced geospatial map. Brint and his team will continue to conduct extensive field testing this avalanche season by many snow-science professionals. Stayed tuned for further updates. Another highlight was a presentation by Dale Atkins, former AAA president. Dale focused on the concept of risk and introduced us to VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Dale’s message included that the goal should be not to minimize risk but rather to minimize uncertainty. He closed on the thought that when faced with uncertainty, don’t rely on decisions that require predictions. The next series of short sessions started with a second talk by Dale, this time on avalanche rescue. Dale is RECCO’s training and education manager, but his presentation encompassed all the types, phases, and equipment involved in rescue. His closing thought was that rescue gear puts you in a place to be lucky – but you don’t ever want to rely on luck! Next was Jeff Lane, one of Mt Washington’s snow rangers, who introduced us to meteorological variability on Mount Washington (and also announced a new free continuing education series scheduled for the second Saturday of every month). Cyrena Briedé, director of summit operations for the Mount Washington Observatory, assessed how well the summit above-treeline 24/7 observations correlate with conditions for the avalanche forecast areas down in the at-treeline glacial cirques. Tim Brown, an instructor trainer for the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE), explained the evolution and current usage of “avalanche problem” descriptors to communicate risk. With our local “arctic maritime” avalanche climate, wind slab is almost always our primary or even exclusive concern. But Eastern skiers see more varied avalanche conditions since we’re always flying out to various Western regions in search of better snow and bigger mountains. Tim’s presentation was especially important for anyone suddenly exposed to the avalanche bulletin format of different forecast centers. Finally, Doug Richmond explained Bridger Bowl’s avalanche program and operations. Despite those previously discussed snowmaking avalanches, and also Whiteface Mountain’s lift-served access to avalanche-prone landslide paths, Eastern ski resorts are pretty much immune from avalanche danger. Therefore, Doug provided a glimpse into a world that is not experienced locally. Interspersed throughout the event were raffles of prizes donated by our sponsors, including American Alpine Club, AIARE, ARVA, Backcountry Access, Black Diamond/Pieps, DPS Skis, Dynafit, Leki, La Sportiva, Mammut, Mountain Hardwear, Off-Piste Mag, Petzl, Ortovox, Skimo.co, Sterling Rope, Toko, and Voile. ESAW finally adjourned down to our second host, International Mountain Equipment for socializing amidst vendor displays from AIARE, AvaTech Safety, BCA, BD/Pieps, La Sportiva, Mammut, Ortovox, Petzl, RECCO, Friends of the Mt Washington Avalanche Center, and Sterling. The following morning, an AIARE instructor refresher training was held at the 2011 ESAW venue. The group marveled at how the first ESAW attendees were ever able to squeeze into that place only two years ago! And indeed we are now outgrowing our current venue, so plan to join us for ESAW at the even larger “Theater in the Woods” in neighboring Intervale, NH, on November 8, 2014.

Chris Joosen, director of the Mt Washington Avalanche Center and safety officer on his Forest, was selected to receive the Chief’s Honor Award for Creating a Safety Culture. The award goes to Chris and his Forest Safety Committee for “revolutionizing safety and safety culture.” This is a huge award and a great honor for Chris which reflects well not only on Chris and his team, but also on the avalanche program.

Jonathan Shefftz lives with his wife and mondopoint-size 16 daughter (still too small for “Tech”-compatible ski touring boots) in western Massachusetts, where he patrols at Northfield Mountain and Mount Greylock. He is an AIARE-qualified instructor, NSP avalanche instructor, and AAA governing board member. When he is not searching out elusive freshies in southern New England, he works as a financial economics consultant and has been qualified as an expert witness in state and federal courts. He can be reached at [email protected] or just look for the lycra-clad skinner training for his NE Rando Race Series.  R