At Aspen Highlands a new chairlift will allow skiers to lap terrain that was closed for decades for fear of avalanches. At Snowmass and Aspen, boundary closures have loosened as demand for the backcountry experience soars. On any given winter weekend, hundreds of skiers, snowshoers, snowboarders and snowmobilers are frolicking through untrammeled snow in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Watching this backcountry revival are three Aspen Highlands ski patrollers who have created an avalanche center that provides snowpack observations and avalanche forecasts specific to their local hills.
“This has been a long time coming for this valley,” said Brian McCall, who with fellow Highlands patrollers Lance Lary and Jimmy Newman has created the nonprofit Roaring Fork Avalanche Center. “We have a lot of access to great backcountry terrain, and use of that terrain is growing significantly. We are filling a niche here for more detailed observations.”
The state-funded Colorado Avalanche Information Center has long provided avalanche forecasts for the state, but that information covers three vast quadrants of the state’s mountains. As more backcountry users venture into avalanche terrain, they require specific snowpack information for precise aspects, and even individual drainages. It’s too precise for the CAIC to address with its tight budget.
“The limitations of our budget have made it so we have to do regional forecasting and we can’t get very narrow,” said Ethan Greene, the center’s director. “Eventually we would like to break our information down for narrow zones. The demand for that kind of high-quality information is increasing across the state. It’s great that people like Brian, Lance and Jimmy are taking the initiative to fill that need in their local area.”
The Roaring Fork center is working closely with the CAIC to build its forecasting database. The center plans to hire two full-time forecasters, mirroring the work of the CAIC satellite office in Summit County and another regional center in Crested Butte.
Like in Crested Butte, snowpack varies wildly within a few miles of the Roaring Fork Valley. At Independence Pass, the snowpack is light and dry. A few miles to the northwest, the Marble area typically gets twice as much snow and has a very different avalanche forecast. That’s the type of swing in variables the CAIC can’t cover with its forecast for Colorado’s Central Mountain region.
“We’ve got a wide variation in a pretty short distance,” said the 33-year-old McCall, a 12-year local in the valley.
The center’s website at www.rfavalanche.org will allow recreational users to post observations and will glean statistical information on snowfall and temperature from existing weather stations around the valley. The plan is to create an information repository for every backcountry user in the valley.
It’s not a new plan. Alan Bernholtz created the nonprofit Crested Butte Avalanche Center five years ago. Bernholtz’s website at www.cbavalanchecenter.org allows users to post and phone in snowpack observations, providing up-to-date glimpses of snow conditions that would require armies of forecasters for most centers.
“The CAIC does such a fine job, but I think a regional forecast center can really focus on specific geographic terrain,” Bernholtz said. “We aren’t looking everywhere, we are looking at one tiny dot on the map.”
Tapping recreational users for their input is a technique the CAIC hopes to mirror as it expands its role as the state’s principal avalanche forecasting center.
“We would like to see these operations kind of brought into the fold so we could get them funding and maintain consistency and quality standards to make sure the best possible product is reaching the public,” said Doug Abromeit, director of the National Avalanche Center in Ketchum, Idaho. “Because a bad avalanche forecast is worse than no forecast at all.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
