{"id":42672,"date":"2022-01-18T11:26:37","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T18:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-a-historic-colorado-avalanche-season-new-tools-for-backcountry-travelers\/"},"modified":"2022-01-18T18:26:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T18:26:37","slug":"after-a-historic-colorado-avalanche-season-new-tools-for-backcountry-travelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-a-historic-colorado-avalanche-season-new-tools-for-backcountry-travelers\/","title":{"rendered":"After a historic Colorado avalanche season, new tools for backcountry travelers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A sign warning avalanches on Cameron Pass on Colorado State 14 Highway on Dec. 26, 2021, outside Walden. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Responding to one of the worst avalanche seasons on record, backcountry skiers are developing tools to help fellow adventurers move more safely through the snowy mountains.<\/p>\n

The innovation follows a season in which 37 skiers, climbers and snowmobilers were killed in avalanches nationwide, including 12 in Colorado. The 2021-22 avalanche season has claimed three lives in Colorado, including two snowshoers and their dog on Jan. 8 in Summit County.<\/p>\n

One mountain guide created a fun and informative weekly podcast. Established guidebook authors are writing books to highlight safer backcountry ski routes. A longtime avalanche educator is developing an app that will help skiers avoid dangerous avalanche slopes.<\/p>\n

\"Through
Through a tilt-shift lens, backcountry ski guide and host of The San Juan Snowcast Chris Dickson stands for a picture on the valley floor outside Telluride on December 27, 2021. (William Woody, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Chris Dickson is a mountain guide and avalanche educator based in Telluride. His new podcast, The San Juan Snowcast<\/em><\/a>, discusses recent observations and avalanche forecasts for one of the country\u2019s most avalanche-prone zones. Like many in the industry, the 2020-21 ski season motivated him to try something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anomalous avalanche fatality season created a motivating force in a lot of people in the avalanche world,\u201d Dickson said. \u201cAll of us realized the message we were sending wasn\u2019t being heard, or we were not sending it the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to providing \u201cbonus content\u201d from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center\u2019s daily forecasts, he hopes to facilitate more communication and community between the secluded ski towns in Colorado\u2019s southwest mountains.<\/p>\n

The podcast relays community events and offers brief educational nuggets for listeners of all experience levels \u2013 from preparing for a backcountry tour, first-aid and repair kit checklists, discussions on technology and debriefs of accidents.<\/p>\n

One of Dickson\u2019s recent guests, Hannah Trim, is the owner of Sew Alpine<\/a>. The episode explored emergency preparedness, and the two discussed Trim\u2019s backcountry rescue sleds.<\/p>\n

\u201cBackcountry skiing is one of those sports that we do that can go from really fun to really dangerous pretty quickly,\u201d said Trim, a former outdoor educator and guide.<\/p>\n

Trim started Sew Alpine in January 2021 and worked closely with San Juan Expeditions<\/a>, a guide operation in Silverton, to design a durable rescue sled for mountain guides and avalanche instructors that packs into a backpack.<\/p>\n

\"Hannah
Hannah Trim, owner of Sew Alpine, demonstrates her rescue slide with the assistance of Alex Brown on Dec. 21, 2021, near Durango. (Jerry McBride, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The sleds, which cost about $300, can haul an injured skier out of the field, roll up as an emergency bivy sack, and create an A-frame shelter when used with ski poles.<\/p>\n

Trim produced a handful of sleds for San Juan Expeditions, and after friends asked her to make more, she adapted the guide sled to create a lightweight version for recreational users to keep in their packs for emergencies.<\/p>\n

Now she sells two made-to-order sleds, the O.G. Rescue Tarp for professional and heavy-duty use and the Lightweight Rescue Tarp for recreational use. She\u2019s currently backed up with 40 new orders, and she estimates a 10-to-12 week lead time.<\/p>\n

\"Hannah
Hannah Trim, owner of Sew Alpine, sews one of her rescue sleds on a 40 year-old sewing machine in her home near Durango on Dec. 21, 2021. (Jerry McBride, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Terrain choices can help backcountry skiers stay safer<\/div>\n

\u201cI do think there are a lot of accidents we could point to where people get into terrain they probably didn\u2019t want to be in the first place,\u201d said Andy Sovick, whose Gunnison-based Beacon Guidebooks<\/a> just published a second edition of a guide by backcountry skiing pioneer Lou Dawson. Light Tours of Colorado <\/em>details more than 60 mellow backcountry routes for travelers who want to minimize avalanche exposure.<\/p>\n

Beacon Guidebooks publishes maps and guidebooks of backcountry ski areas in Colorado and Washington. Sovick stumbled into the publishing business in 2013 after compiling his own photos and information to create the Crested Butte Ski Atlas. Eight years later, his company has published 26 maps and guidebooks. The maps are available in print, or can be uploaded to backcountry ski apps like Rakkup or OnX.<\/p>\n

Each guidebook is written by a local expert. Sovick, for example, has skied 90% of the lines in the Crested Butte Ski Atlas, measuring slope angles and exploring complex terrain.<\/p>\n

They also use Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale, a tool created by Grant Statham and Parks Canada 25 years ago to help determine the avalanche risk of each slope or ski area. Beacon Guidebooks uses an ATES rating to help skiers understand the terrain.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Sovick and Dawson discussed the value in creating a guidebook with simple backcountry ski tours. Dawson is a Colorado ski mountaineering legend and the founder of Wild Snow<\/em><\/a>, the first blog dedicated to backcountry skiing.<\/p>\n

\"Andy
Andy Sovick skis up Snodgrass Mountain near Crested Butte for an early morning backcountry tour on Dec. 22. Sovick created Beacon Guidebooks, a map and guidebook company based in Gunnison, to provide backcountry skiers with more information to make safer decisions. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Dawson, who has spent more than 50 years in mountain environments around the world, was the first person to ski all of Colorado\u2019s 14ers. After losing friends to backcountry accidents, the downside of the sport started to bother him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are careful and you pick the right runs on the right days, you can eliminate danger,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cThe objective of the book came out of that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the goal of keeping backcountry skiers safer, Sovick knows the guidebooks he publishes aren\u2019t always well received. After he published the first edition of the Crested Butte Ski Atlas, <\/em>some skiers in the community said, \u201cThere goes the town, there goes backcountry skiing.\u201d<\/p>\n

His goal isn\u2019t to guard secret powder stashes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that keeps me going is the motivation to help people learn more about their terrain, because that\u2019s a big piece of the puzzle,\u201d said Sovick.<\/p>\n

He knows sharing information is also a great responsibility.<\/p>\n

A December avalanche fatality on Crystal Mountain Ski Area in Washington occurred on a route that is documented in Beacon Guidebook\u2019s Crystal Mountain guidebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this product and with our system and method, comes great responsibility, and I take that really seriously,\u201d Sovick said.<\/p>\n

Beacon Guidebooks will release up to 20 backcountry travel maps in 2022, four of which will focus on light tours around the country.<\/p>\n

Technological disruption of avalanche education<\/div>\n

Jeff Banks is an international mountain guide and avalanche educator based in Crested Butte. He equates the safety of backcountry skiing with winning a hand at poker in a Las Vegas casino: The house always wins, and the odds are not in your favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we look at the numbers, they don\u2019t support the fact that the avalanche community is a low-risk community,\u201d Banks said. \u201cIf backcountry riders were governed by the FAA, they would have shut us down a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Jeff Banks, an IFMGA guide and avalanche instructor, goes for a morning ski tour with his daughter Winter near Crested Butte on Dec. 21, 2021. Banks is designing an app to assist backcountry skiers with decision making. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In January 2020, Banks met JB Leach, a software designer from Golden, while teaching an avalanche course.<\/p>\n

Banks communicated his frustrations with the uncertainty backcountry users experience. For him, the two-day course created a nearly impossible scenario in which to provide backcountry travelers with enough tools to stay safe.<\/p>\n

Banks decided to shake things up and introduce concepts he learned while working in Canada and Europe to supplement the course curriculum.<\/p>\n

The concepts were based on avalanche statistics and algorithms from studies in Switzerland. Banks used the statistics to help students determine the probability of triggering avalanches.<\/p>\n

A study published in 2018 from findings in Austria and Switzerland found that 95% of avalanche accidents occurred in terrain that local bulletins noted as dangerous. Banks then taught his students to use aspects and slope angle as their tool, rather than complicated snow science.<\/p>\n

But Banks wanted an app for that, and two years later, Banks and leach are designing an Aspect Avy.<\/p>\n

The app will measure a user\u2019s risk, provide safer terrain recommendations, nudge users to stay on task during the tour and provide a debrief at the end of the day to give feedback on the user\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they get coached throughout the process,\u201d Banks said.<\/p>\n

Each year, more and more backcountry users turn to their phones to help make decisions, navigate terrain and stay informed. Dozens of apps like Gaia, OnX backcountry, Theodolite and Open Snow have become essential for backcountry tours, with tools that track weather patterns, measure slope angles and deliver precise maps of slopes that could slide. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center this month unveiled its new online avalanche explorer tool<\/a>, which allows users to filter recent avalanche activity based on zones, dates, elevations, aspects, size and triggers.<\/p>\n

Banks is committed to using statistics to make decisions, because most of the time, backcountry users get lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an unforgiving place to learn. You can make a lot of mistakes and nothing happens. And then you make a mistake and something really bad happens. There is no middle ground,\u201d Banks said. \u201cThose kinds of things happen because people aren\u2019t getting feedback through their lifetime of traveling in the backcountry.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new podcast, a rescue sled, an education app and a guidebook offering mellow follow last year’s deadly avalanche season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[377,950,28,29,1309,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-avalanche-landslide","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-mountains","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42672"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}