ANOTHER ROUND
Here we go again.
I’d like to start by extending an earnest thank you to everyone who supported this project last season. The conceptual, emotional, and financial underwriting you’ve provided has been a great contribution, and I appreciate you all deeply. If you are new here or if you are finding this useful, consider sharing with a friend and/or supporting with a few of your cold, hard dollars.
Welcome to the second season of VandenBos Avalanche Weather. I started this project to provide an alternative perspective on snow and avalanche education. The idea is this: you are trying to enrich your experience and fortify your skills for traveling safely through the backcountry. The more time you spend thinking about how you are doing this, and the more time you spend learning about and watching snow behave, the better off you will be. By zooming out from a local scale to a broader regional and continental scale, we are able to recognize and watch patterns play out, even if they aren’t recognizable at the scale of our backyard.
An important reminder here: even the most experienced backcountry traveler requires maintenance and upkeep of their skills. This is just as true for me as it is for you. We are playing a very challenging game in a deadly and unforgiving environment. We are all, every one of us, capable of mistakes.
I will spend a lot more time talking about the value of experience in upcoming posts. This will include taking a good, hard look at the extent and the limits of our own experience. We will also spend time thinking about how to increase the value of the experiences we are having. For any of this to be beneficial, you must pay attention! Our attention is our most valuable resource.
WEATHER
The fall is in full swing with dropping temperatures and shortening days. Leaves are changing colors and spinning to the ground as the sun arcs lower and lower across the sky. Winter is on the horizon. You might not be ready for it, but it is ready for you.
Snowfall began in the high peaks of the Western United States at the end of August. Storms brought rain and upper elevation snow off and on through the month of September. Southerly slopes have been quick to melt back in the sun, but shaded upper elevation slopes are beginning to gradually accumulate snow in areas favored by fall storms. It is now late enough in the year that some of this snow will be sticking around and forming the base of the season’s snowpack.
As I write this, a deep low makes landfall on the coast of Washington near the Canadian border. Moisture associated with this low and a trough out ahead of it brings rain and mountain snow to the high peaks of Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Favored areas have already tallied over an inch of water, with snow lines hovering between 9,000 and 10,000’. Along the West Coast, precipitation appears to be falling as rain.
Temperatures continue to dip through the week and into the weekend, with additional rounds of precipitation landing across the West. I’m expecting to see measurable accumulations of snow in the high peaks of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho by the weekend. The peaks of coastal and intermountain Canada will also be stacking significant snow during this period. Temperatures look to stay a bit warm along the West Coast, but above the rain line we could see significant accumulations of snow here as well.
PHILOSOPHY
There isn’t a ton to talk about yet when it comes to the snow on the ground. Fortunately for us, snow is only a fraction of our equation. Sure, snow is complex…but have you ever tried to understand a human being? Here is a brief essay to usher in a contemplative season:
Thanks to my parents, I started hunting at a young age. We needed the food and it was a good way to keep my brother and me busy. It wasn’t until late in my teens that I started to gain a fuller appreciation of just how rich and deep the experience of hunting can be. There is a power in getting absolutely lost in a landscape. In spending hours with a set of binoculars, peeling apart the world in front of you, and finding new sights all the while. And then, taking it apart on foot, uncovering nooks and crannies that were invisible from your vantage point, no matter how hard you looked.
This isn’t about hunting, necessarily. What I’m concerned about, and what I want you to be thinking about, is your attention. Hunting has a way of narrowing and heightening one’s focus. The deeper you look, the more you realize there is to see. I am reminded of this each year when I transition from running around the hills to moving at a much slower pace, searching for animals. There is so much to see out there, but we do have to look for it. I often have the problem of being unable to leave the summit of a mountain because I still have so much to cast my eyes over. I’m not complaining; it is a good problem to have.
A false assumption that we make is that we are able to perceive the entire world around us. Or, to put it as famed psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, this idea that “what you see is all there is”. A powerful, largely unconscious process occurs in our heads each day. We wander through the world, gather information with our senses, and push it all into our brains, which creates what feels like a singular experience of reality. Don’t let this illusion lead you astray! You are only taking in a tiny fraction of reality, and everything you are seeing is colored by the lens of your experience, by your wants and desires, and by where you place your attention.
When we play in the snow-covered backcountry, we are hunters too. We pursue stable snow, preferably the soft and deep variety. We look for recent avalanche activity and for obvious signs of instability in the snow we move through. We cast our eyes about the landscape, make observations, and then try to explain why the world looks the way it does. This isn’t a simple, passive process; it’s a complex, iterative process that has no end.
FALL HOMEWORK
It is time to take out your tools, knock the rust back, and begin to sharpen them. Start with your mental tools, and then move on to your physical ones. You likely won’t be needing your avalanche probe tomorrow, but you can start focusing your powers of observation right now. Here are a few ideas for getting that snow-brain cranking:
NOW is the time to start watching and documenting the accumulating snow in your area. At this point, the most important things to pay attention to are which slopes are holding snow and which aren’t. Can you find a pattern in the snow’s distribution? How deep is the snow where you find it? Is it covering the terrain or are there lots of rocks and trees and sticks poking out? Did it all fall in one storm or are there multiple layers of snow? Maybe your hills are still bare and dry? Great, that makes things easy, and is an equally important observation. Take lots of pictures.
Did you trigger an avalanche last year? Perhaps you were even caught and carried by a slide? Take a few hours to return to the site and have a good look at the terrain without snow. Spend a bit of time looking at a few photos of the slide before you head into the field, and take more photos while you are out there. Recreate the scene in your mind. Talk it through with your partner from the day. Remember, you aren’t necessarily looking for answers here; start with the observation.
Perhaps you didn’t make any avalanches last year. No problem, I’m confident that at least a few released in your local hills. Take a trip back through your memory banks or through the archive on your local avalanche center’s website. Visit the site of a slide that you found particularly interesting or surprising. Spend time observing the terrain and describe it to yourself. Does it make sense that an avalanche occurred here? Why or why not? Do you think they happen frequently or infrequently here? How can you tell? Again, exercising your powers of observation is the focus.
What’s that you say, you can’t find a single avalanche path to visit!? Ok, no problem at all. Simply observe the terrain you have in front of you. Look at slopes and think about if they could produce avalanches. Spend time estimating and then measuring slope angles. How steep do you think that concrete slope adjacent to the highway overpass is? Is your roof steep enough to avalanche? Next, read this excellent and disconcerting paper written by Ian McCammon about how good (bad!) we humans are at both estimating and measuring slope angles. There is some serious cud to chew on in there.
NOTES! Spend some time now, before your first day out in the snow, to establish a way to record your observations. This can be done in a notebook or digitally on your phone/computer. I’ve trended towards a mix of physical and digital records over the seasons. The important part here is that you have a way to record your observations, and that you are recording them.
Phew, that will keep you busy! As it turns out, this act of safely playing in a snow-covered world requires enormous effort. The physical portion is obvious, but this mental portion can easily be neglected. Your mental muscles need to be stretched and exercised and today is a great day to start.
Thanks for joining for another season. Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, questions, and feedback. I’m excited and ready for what comes next.
-Ben VandenBos