Avalanche deaths trigger review

U.S. Forest Service officials say they plan to re-examine local and nationwide avalanche control procedures following avalanche deaths at Western ski resorts.

Avalanches have killed visitors at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, Snowbird in Utah and Squaw Valley in California.

Nonfatal avalanches have caught skiers or ski patrollers at Jackson Hole; Mammoth, Calif.; and Colorado’s Vail, Telluride and Arapahoe Basin.

“Public safety is going to be the first and foremost for the administration of the ski area permit,” said Ray Spencer, winter sports administrator for Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Doug Abromeit, Forest Service National Avalanche Center director in Ketchum, Idaho, said the recent avalanche activity is unusual.

“It has been a crazy, crazy year,” he said.

The culprit is a weather pattern affecting snowpack across the West: A dry autumn that created a layer of icy, crusty snow, followed by heavy snowfall starting in mid-December.

“Ski patrollers have been out there pounding it, trying to make it safe,” Abromeit said, noting that explosives had been used even on the slopes where deaths occurred.

“I wouldn’t call it a wakeup call because I don’t think anybody has been asleep. These were an extraordinary string of events.”

Associated Press

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Commission meetings set

Idaho’s Fish and Game Commission will consider changes to 2009 hunting seasons for moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat at a Jan. 27-29 meeting in Boise.

Also on the agenda is a legislative budget hearing.

Washington’s Fish and Wildlife Commission postponed its meeting this weekend because of weather-related travel restrictions. The commission will be rescheduling sessions to deal with spring chinook salmon, pilot grazing projects in Eastern Washington and state budget issues.

Rich Landers