In the Whitefish, Swan, Flathead and Apgar ranges, along with the Lake McDonald and Marias Pass areas in Glacier National Park, “unusually dangerous” conditions exist, which FAC officials predict will persist through the weekend.
Buried 2 to 3 feet deep beneath the snow’s surface, persistent weak layers remain sensitive, which have been the culprit forfour accidents in the past week. Forecasters say the slabs can be triggered from long distances away while avalanches may connect across terrain features like ridges, releasing from multiple start zones at once with the most widespread activity on west, north and east facing slopes.
Even before the new snow fell, the avalanche center had received reports of winter recreationists being caught, carried or buried in slides, prompting forecasters to describe the snowpack as “unusual,” “lethal” and “spooky.” Yesterday, a rider triggered a more than 1,200-foot-wide avalanche (pictured above) from flat terrain, while a skier on Monday was caught and carried in a large slide.
“Conditions are truly unusual,” forecaster Cam Johnson wrote in today’s advisory. “I’ve personally not seen a weak layer remain this sensitive to human triggers for this long. A constant stream of human-triggered avalanches has occurred since it was buried at the end of January … Typically, we see avalanches decrease as the weak layer is buried deeper. This one is not the case. Unfortunately, the size of avalanches being triggered is only getting larger and more dangerous. We do not anticipate conditions to improve in the near future.”
Forecasters advise avoiding travel on or under steep slopes and steering clear of steeps above terrain traps like gullies, creek beds, tree stands and cliffs where the risks and consequences rise.
The special avalanche bulletin comes two days after a group of 15 people were involved in a fatal avalanche in the Central Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, Calif.Of the 12 people caught in the avalanche, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed eight died while one is still missing as search and rescue operations continue, according to a preliminary accident summary provided by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC).
As part of a group with Blackbird Mountain Guides out of Truckee, the party was on their third day of their trip and were staying in the Frog Lake Huts near Castle Peak when a storm slab was triggered, causing a 450-foot vertical fall with a of D2.5 rating on the Destructive Force Scale, which ranges from D1 to D5.
Since December, there have been 15 nationwide avalanche fatalities, which have occurred in Utah, Wyoming, Washington and California.
Media outlets are calling the tragedy the deadliest avalanche in modern California history and the deadliest nationwide avalanche since 1981, when 11 climbers were killed on Mount Rainier in Washington.
Northwest Montana is home to two of the deadliest avalanches in the state’s history, which includes a slide that killed five climbers on Mount Cleveland in Glacier National Park in 1969 and the Peters Ridge avalanche in the Swan Range on New Year’s Eve in 1993, which killed five snowmobilers.
Like the recently triggered avalanche in California, the Peters Ridge incident drew a large-scale search and rescue operation (pictured above) along with national attention. A few years ago, Jim Pierce, a snowmobiler involved in the avalanche, recalled the stream of local and nationwide media requests he received while he was still processing the disaster and attending a string of funerals for the victims whose ages ranged from 7 to 47.
“A lot of people think that the only victims are the ones that died,” Pierce said. “But in a situation like this, everybody that’s surviving around you – it’s a very traumatic event.”
Despite the tragedy, Pierce’s experience on Peters Ridge helped inspire a passion for search and rescue operations and, 13 years later, he started donating his time and helicopter to assist on missions, eventually evolving into Two Bear Air in 2014. The rescue helicopter service has since been dispatched to well over 1,000 missions, and in Pierce’s time on the crew, he recalls responding to roughly 30 avalanche-related missions, most of which were body recoveries.
I’m Maggie Dresser, here with today’s Daily Roundup.
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