Avalanche sweeps down Baldy; nobody injured
Slide nearly buries skier
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
A major avalanche ripped loose from Bald Mountain on Friday morning,
sweeping 1,000 feet down a vertical slope. The 150-foot- wide snow slab started at 9,000
feet in Lookout Bowl, above left. The avalanche occurred within ski area boundaries,
narrowly missing a skier. (Express photos by Willy Cook)
At 11:12 a.m. Friday, a slab of windblown, heavy snow 150-feet wide and
three feet thick broke loose from Bald Mountains pinnacle in Lookout Bowl and swept
over 1,000 vertical feet down the mountain.
A woman, known to ski patrollers simply as "the woman in red"
because of her red ski suit, was nearly caught in the slide. She was able to ski to a
ridge on one of the bowls sides as the avalanche passed, according to reports from
eyewitnesses who were riding the Mayday chairlift.
Had she or anyone else been caught by the slide, it could have meant
their deaths.
Bald Mountain ski lifts were promptly closed as all available mountain
personnel attended to the slide. Masses of skiers and snowboarders milled around the bases
of the mountain waiting to receive lift ticket refunds, swilling cold ones or filling the
grapevine with rumors of the avalanche.
The Warm Springs and River Run sides of the mountain reopened at 1:05
p.m., but Seattle Ridge and bowl areas remained closed.
At the time the avalanche released, Tom Boley, director of The
Community Schools outdoor program, and Beau Mills, member of the Galena Backcountry
Ski Patrol, were working with the Sun Valley Ski Patrol to teach a group of Community
School 8th graders about avalanche safety.
Boley and Mills, both experienced in the backcountry, were impressed
with how the Sun Valley Ski Patrol worked under pressure.
Mills called the ski patrols work "outstanding" and
"textbook."
"They covered every angle possible. It was quick and
efficient," she said.
Boley said several groups of ski patrollers were in the bowl within a
minute after it slid.
"Im just left with a lot of appreciation and respect for
what they do up there," he said.
According to Sun Valley Co. spokesman Jack Sibbach, an avalanche
transceiver search was performed over the entire slide area. Also, two avalanche search
dogs combed the area twice, and two waves of avalanche probe lines meticulously searched
the debris.
Nothing was found, which matches witness reports stating that no one
was caught in the slide.
Several more skiers and snowboarders had a birds eye view of the
slide from the Mayday and Lookout chairlifts.
Ketchum resident Jason Howell saw the slide from Mayday. He was about
two thirds of the way up the lift when the slab broke loose, he said.
"It was kind of scary," he said. "It looked like it was
going 60 miles an hour in a quarter mile. It was crazy. There was a snow cloud 80 to 100
feet in the air."
Clint
Jones was also on the Mayday lift when the slide broke loose.
Jones reported that "the woman in red" had about 30 seconds
to get out of the way, and everyone who could see what was going on yelled at her to keep
skiing to the side of the bowl.
"It didnt look like that much, but you could tell it had
some power behind it. Once it started, it had some power," Jones said.
According to avalanche.org, an on-line look at avalanche conditions around
the West, there have been nine avalanche-related fatalities in North America this year.
Two of those occurred in Utah last Tuesday in similar snow conditions to what exist
locally.
Over the weekend, local hills and mountainsides were reported to have
very high avalanche danger. That danger is subsiding slightly at higher elevations as the
snowpack settles, according to the Sun Valley Avalanche Centers daily avalanche
report. Lower elevations are still extremely dangerous.
Though cloudy, the weather is not expected to dump considerable amounts
of snow on the Wood River Valley in the coming days. The snowpack should continue to
settle and stabilize.