It's been snowing - that heavy wet stuff.
It's been blowing 45 mph winds on the hillsides. Warm too, not bitter cold.
Guess what that does to the snow-covered slopes!
An avalanche on the Alyeska Ski Resorts' slopes briefly shut it down the 25th.
There had been 3 skiers in the bowl below the slide, but all were safe.
When an avalanche lets loose in a place like Alyeska the Ski patrol and other
volunteers begin immediately to check the area, trying first a beacon search
and then a probe search. The slide was about five feet deep, and was narrow,
and short. Last March's avalanche that partially buried 2 skiers was stronger.
The resort regularly does avalanche-destruction by "shooting off the cannons"
that release those snowloads ready to drop on its patrons, but sometimes
Mother Nature has a surprise for them anyway...
special note:
The Ak Highway Department occasionally closes the roads and uses howitzers to
dislodge the snow threatening the highway.
- but this (the 29th) morning's
Anchorage Daily News
described how the Seward Highway was closed yesterday because of * 2 *
avalanches which covered the road.
This effectively cut off the Kenai Peninsula road system from Anchorage.
And just Wednesday, in Cordova, after 2 days of heavy wet snowfall, a slide roared down an Eyak Lake area slope, destroying four houses and killing a woman in her home. Five hours later the rescuers dug out amother victim, who was injured and trapped in the rubble of snow, broken tree limbs and the remains of his home. It was a just-in-time rescue; he had stopped breathing just before they pulled him out.
This story was in today's Anchorage Daily News.
In March of 99 there was the avalanche which killed the 6 snowmachiners in Turnagain Pass.
Again, this winter in the Hatcher Pass playground, an avalanche was set off which buried a snowmachiner. The riders had been "high-marking", a dangerous challenge in the snowmachine world - which triggered the avalanches which buried them and others.
It behooves everyone who plays outdoors on the slopes of our mountains to go to Avalanche School, or at the very least, to log on to the Alaska Mountain Safety Center's website and read all about avalanche dangers in the backcountry here - .
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