Avalanche danger hits extreme

A day after the bodies of two Gonzaga University students were recovered from a deadly avalanche near Mullan, Idaho, a regional avalanche warning center had clear advice for those considering a winter adventure in the region’s rain-sodden backcountry.

“Stay home!” was the message posted on the Web site for the U.S. Forest Service’s Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center.

The rain and heavy snow has created a “window of extreme avalanche danger” in the Inland Northwest, according to the Forest Service warning. But the risk is expected to lower later in the week as the warm air and rain bind the new snow with the harder underlayer, said Bob Kasun, a Forest Service avalanche forecaster in Coeur d’Alene.

“If it stays warm, then it will start to stabilize in the next couple of days,” he said. “But all this new stuff is popping off pretty easily right now.”

The unusually warm weather has essentially erased most of the clues from Sunday’s deadly avalanche that killed Gonzaga University students Brian Brett and Pete Tripp, Kasun said. But reports of the incident reveal that it would have taken little to trigger the snow slide. The steep, east-facing slope was covered with fresh powder atop a slippery underlayer of snow.

More information also has become available about a Friday avalanche near Park City, Utah, that killed 27-year-old Sandpoint resident Shane Maixner. Although Maixner was violating state laws by skiing outside the marked boundaries of the ski area, friends and relatives say Maixner was not a daredevil.

“It wasn’t reckless,” said Marty Perrin, a Portland resident who was snowboarding with Maixner on Friday shortly before the avalanche. “We rode together earlier that day in the same bowl.”

Perrin missed the avalanche because a broken binding on his snowboard sent him off the slopes. But another Sandpoint resident, Erin Brannigan, was on the slope when Maixner was overtaken by the slide, Perrin said. Brannigan could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

“Everybody is tired of talking about it,” Perrin said. “I went down, they went up. It happened.”

Perrin added that the incident is not going to change how or where he rides his snowboard. “I don’t think anything’s going to change at how I look at riding,” he said.

A report issued Monday by the Forest Service’s Utah Avalanche Center confirmed that Maixner was not snowboarding in virgin powder.

“The path had been skied multiple times that morning and photos show numerous tracks going into the fracture line,” the report stated. The document also noted that the victim – no specific names were mentioned – was not wearing an avalanche transceiver, which allows rescuers to find buried victims quickly. Maixner’s body was found two days after the avalanche.

Many skiers and snowboarders mistakenly believe that previous tracks are a sign of a slope’s strength, said Dale Atkins, an avalanche forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which tracks avalanche deaths nationwide. Atkins said there have been cases where “hundreds” of skiers have crossed a weak slope before it finally shatters into an avalanche.

“You hit the one wrong spot, and everything can come down,” Atkins said.

Avalanche experts are wringing their hands as how to reverse a spike in recent years of avalanche fatalities, Atkins said. Snowmobilers, who have comprised about 45 percent of all avalanche fatalities since the late 1990s, are leading the increase. Advances in snowmobile technology have made it easier for people to reach avalanche-prone areas in the backcountry, Atkins said.

Even with improvements in avalanche forecasting and an emphasis on educating backcountry enthusiasts, Atkins said he expects to see the situation worsen. About 30 people now die every year in avalanches in the United States, compared with an average of five or less before the 1970s.

“We’re going to see the number of avalanche fatalities increase,” Atkins said.

The growing popularity of skiing out-of-bounds also concerns ski resorts, said Stephen Lane, spokesman for Kellogg’s Silver Mountain. Most resorts are located on Forest Service land or are surrounded by public land.

“We can’t stop people from going out there,” Lane said.

With proper training and equipment, backcountry skiing can be safe, Lane said. The problem is a rising number of novices venturing off the groomed slopes to pursue untracked powder. The Silver Mountain ski patrol has been called on at least three times this season to rescue out-of-bounds skiers, he said.