JACKSON, Wyo.(MTN) --Ski industry, U.S. Forest Service and ski patrol associations in coming months will be examining closely the circumstances of avalanches that have killed three skiers and slammed into a restaurant inside ski areas during December.
The three skiers died at Utah's Snowbird, California's Squaw Valley, and Wyoming's Jackson Hole.
Other non-fatal slides have caught skiers or ski patrollers at Jackson Hole, and also California's Mammoth and Colorado's Arapahoe Basin and Vail ski areas.
Doug Abromeit, director of the Forest Service National Avalanche Center in Ketchum, Idaho, called the avalanche fatalities and close calls "unprecedented" in developed ski areas. "We have never seen a series of incidents (like those that occurred) inbounds in the last couple of weeks," he told the Jackson Hole News&Guide in late December.
"It's been a crazy, crazy year," he added.
In the case of the three fatalities, ski patrollers had used hand-thrown charges or howitzers on the slopes that ultimately failed, but without success. The slopes had all been skied by others before they let loose.
"Snow is an extremely complicated medium," Abromeit told the newspaper. "Ski patrols can reduce the risk to almost zero, but they can't eliminate it."
But the potential for avalanche that partially buried five ski patrollers at the on-mountain Bridge Restaurant at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort was well-known. One of the patrollers was buried to his neck; he was dug out by Jerry Blann, president of the resort.
