On Jan. 25, four snowmobilers were riding some of the Snake River Range’s most challenging terrain northeast of Palisades Reservoir.
Recent storms had caused the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center to post the avalanche danger at “considerable.”
Three of the four riders waited at the bottom of a slope while Tommy Hawkins, of Layton, Utah (formerly of Victor), made his second attempt to climb a slope and obtain a ridge with his turbo-charged machine.
The slope failed and a large avalanche roared down, swallowing Hawkins and sliding into the other three riders. Hawkins vanished, two others were buried to their waists, and a fourth was completely buried except for one hand. The three managed to dig themselves out and hunt for Hawkins using his beacon’s signal.
As they neared the beacon’s signal, the searchers could hear Hawkins’ running snowmobile beneath the surface of the slide. They dug down and found him buried headfirst, unconscious, his head six feet below the surface. His avalanche airbag was deployed and his helmet was packed with snow. CPR was administered but Hawkins died of asphyxiation.
“The bottom line is: Never underestimate the avalanche problem,” said Lynne Wolfe, an avalanche educator and editor of a small technical paper in Jackson, Wyoming, called the Avalanche Review. “Choose terrain to match the conditions and leave yourself a good margin. If you’re not sure what’s above you then stay well out of the way.”
Wolfe, who teaches avalanche awareness courses for Exum Mountain Guides, will be one of the speakers at the Avalanche Awareness Night scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 7 at Taylorview Middle School in Idaho Falls. She will be joined by Sarah Carpenter co-owner of the American Avalanche Institute headquartered in Jackson.
The annual Avalanche Awareness Night is organized by Lani and Wray Landon, who lost their son to an avalanche 11 seasons ago. Besides top-drawer instruction, the free program will also feature several door prizes.
With backcountry skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling popularity at an all-time high, several groups are preaching how to be safe. Last month, an avalanche awareness course aimed at snowmobilers attracted about 100 people at Rexburg Motorsports.
“A lot of people, and for good reason, won’t ride with people who haven’t taken a class,” said Matt Dyer, a manager at Rexburg Motorsports. “I want to make sure I’m riding with guys who know how to use (avalanche gear) and how to find me. If you take the wrong person who is not trained ... they can become a liability.”
Summer Andersen started the Adam Andersen Avalanche Project in the winter of 2018 after her husband died in an avalanche while snowmobiling near Mount Jefferson in the Island Park region. She said the project’s main fundraising comes from an awareness night held at Action Motor Sports in Idaho Falls each fall. The project has a few goals to post signs on potential danger and offer free avalanche packs that snowmobilers can check out. With the help of others, she posted 10 signs this fall in the Palisades area at popular snowmobile entry points. Last year, she posted five signs in the Island Park area.
“I’ve been able to get about six avalanche packs for people to use for free in Island Park and Idaho Falls,” Andersen said. “This year I’m going to try to offer scholarships for people to take their avy courses. The whole idea is to promote awareness and education and make sure people know what they’re doing when they go out in the backcountry.”
Anderson said she is also pushing to get improved forecasting for areas such as Island Park which has been left out of conditions reports in the past. The Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center currently posts conditions on the Centennial Range.
“It’s kind of in a dead spot,” she said. “Where Adam died is technically in the Centennials. Before he died there was no forecasting for that area. Almost a year later they opened up forecasting for the Centennials. Even now they don’t get all of it.”
Carpenter said the Avalanche Awareness Night will look at the current snowpack and how it formed, review better tools for communicating within a group, as well as communicating after something happens.
“We will present information on snowpack, weather trends and decision making,” Carpenter said. “We will also introduce or review the fundamentals of how to recognize avalanche terrain.”
Wolfe said she hopes to educate through entertaining stories.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about, researching, printing, things that have to do with decision making and human factors,” Wolfe said. “I really think that the bottom line is people think they can get away with it. This won’t happen to me. The minute you start acknowledging how this can happen to me, it happened to my neighbor, it happened in this spot, then we’d be a little bit more conservative in the places where we need to be.”
In Wyoming, a state where snowmobile avalanche deaths now outnumber all other avalanche victims, Wolfe said out-of-staters are often caught unaware.
“The locals seemed to be pretty well educated,” she said. “The visitors, at least on Togwotee (Pass), who come in from Wisconsin for a week don’t really understand the extent of the problem. It’s much more than gear. It’s understanding how to recognize good conditions and bad conditions and how to tailor your behavior appropriately.”
Carpenter said this season’s snowpack is already looking a bit suspect in the region’s mountains with areas of weak, sugary snow.
“When we finally get more snow, the set up will be like trying to build a house on a foundation of sand,” she said. “We are going to be keeping our eyes out for this weak early season snow.”
The experts said the Avalanche Awareness Night is not meant to replace hands-on courses that teach in the field. Instructors recommend learning the basics, such as using a beacon, using a probe, digging snow pits, and reading and recognizing dangerous situations.
One tool easily available to backcountry users is online avalanche forecasts. Sites such as the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center and Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center provide daily forecasts and conditions during the winter season.
