|
No. 1 safety item remains common sense
For
a long time, I was a member of an elite group, backcountry skiers,
who led the world in avalanche deaths. In the 1980s, there were
more deaths among backcountry skiers than among those participating
in any other outdoor activity. Today, the new leader in death by
avalanche is snowmobilers. Today, snowmobilers - or snow machiners
as they frequently are called - have twice the death rate as the
next leading recreational group.
When I was first introduced to snowmobiles
they were clumsy, awkward machines - underpowered, overweight and
hard to control. They were the antithesis of what movement over
snow is all about. But today, technology has created some awesome
snow machines, they can climb remarkable steeps, and cover a 100
miles of trail in a day. In the old days, a snow machiner had to
wait a couple of days after a big snowfall to drive his machine
through the powder, and by that time the avalanche danger had subsided.
Today, a snow machine can rip through deep
snow and climb hills more than 30 degrees steep. And this ability
has brought the snow machiner into direct contact with ideal avalanche
terrain. No longer restricted to flat trails and firm snow, the
modern snow machiner can practice "high-marking", that is, driving
his or her machines as high as possible up steep slopes. Not a practice
conducive to avalanche avoidance.
The rapid increase in snow machiner deaths
hasn't gone unnoticed by the industry. Today, snowmobile dealerships
in mountainous terrain sell avalanche rescue equipment and know
where to find snowmobile-friendly avalanche education workshops.
But the deaths continue because access to avalanche terrain continues
to outstrip avalanche savvy and education.
And, unfortunately there is another problem.
The weight of a skier, even a skier tumbling through the snow, is
nothing compared to the mass of a snow machine and its driver traveling
straight uphill at 30 mph. This means the resulting avalanches involving
snow machines seem to be bigger than those triggered by skiers with
a proportionally greater chance of death and injury.
Saturday, in a valley near Anchorage, Alaska,
seven snow machiners triggered a giant avalanche that killed two
of them. Observers reported the avalanche to be the size of three
city blocks by three city blocks. Although the avalanche ran for
a mile, there still were blocks of debris up to 40 feet high. Ironically,
six of the seven snow machiners carried avalanche transceivers and
probes. One of the victims was buried nine feet deep, his transceiver
still faithfully sending out its signal. Avalanche safety isn't
about technology, it's about common sense.
|