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South central Alaska has seen an extreme mix of winter weather so far.

And while Alaskans are eager to go explore the snow covered mountains, avalanche danger is an ever present threat in Alaskan backcountry.

Tonight, we'll talk with avalanche experts and guides about how best to prepare and what to watch for when venturing out into the mountains.

Good evening.

Senator Lisa murkowski had planned to join us but was unable to be here tonight.

However, the senator was the guest on Talk of Alaska earlier in the week.

And if you'd like to hear her describe the Alaska funding within the recently passed $1.7 trillion omnibus bill.

You can find that full program on our website, Alaska Public Dawg.

So tonight, instead of talking about politics and federal spending, we're going to discuss the very real need for avalanche awareness and safety.

If you plan to get out into South Central's backcountry.

But before we get to that discussion, we'll start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's Collaborative statewide news network.

A polar bear killed two people in an extremely rare attack Wednesday in the village of whales.

Alaska state troopers identified the people killed as a 24 year old mother and her one year old son.

The attack happened near the school, according to the superintendent of the Bering Strait School District, who said the bear was seen chasing residents.

According to state troopers, a community member shot and killed the bear as it attacked the mother and son.

The people of whales are no strangers to coexisting with polar bears.

The village routinely organizes patrols during the season when the bears are expected in town from roughly December to May.

The Alaska House of Representatives has elected Wasilla Republican Kathy Tilton to the role of House Speaker.

Tilton was elected to the position on Wednesday, the second day of the legislative session.

This is the third legislative cycle in which the House began its session with no coalition formed.

Though this is shorter than in recent years when it's taken as long as five weeks to organize.

According to Tilton, the majority coalition that elected her includes nearly all House Republicans, as well as the rural caucus, which is made up of two independents and two Democrats.

The coalition, according to Tilton, is based on policy agreement dealing with the fiscal stability of Alaska and Alaska.

Railroad freight train ran into avalanche debris on the track early Tuesday morning, just south of Girdwood.

Railroad officials say the impact derailed two locomotives and partially derailed a third.

Girdwood Fire and Rescue helped evacuate the two crew members and lead locomotive who were unharmed.

The slide happened overnight before the train arrived.

It struck the debris just before two in the morning.

The Alaska Department of Transportation says the avalanche didn't directly affect drivers as it didn't get far enough to reach the Seward Highway.

You can find the full versions of these stories and many more on our website, Alaska Public Gorg, or by downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion this evening.

Avalanches are always a threat in Alaska in the winter time, and this year is no exception.

Snow conditions in the Turnitin and Hatcher Pass areas have set up especially tricky avalanche conditions in the last few weeks.

One person was carried and caught and carried in an avalanche in turn again in early January.

Since then, additional snow and wind have made the situation more dangerous.

To give you a sense of the current conditions, let's watch a quick update from the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center posted Wednesday from Tin Can.

It's like the National Forest Avalanche Center.

We're here on team camp when they had about 1300 people, just a couple hundred feet above the trailhead and we thought you have one inches on Seattle Ridge before we came over here at lower elevations with pretty wide propagation that we're on a layer.

So we just stepped off the track in the first big open meadow and we figured two collapses just when in fact they've got to dig a pit.

We found a layer buried.

We're about to go back some centimeters deep, really large range of service or they're pretty obvious in the snow bit wall.

And we've been getting really consistent propagation about 10 to 12 growth in comparison to the extent of contact.

So really strong indicator that the layers the active and central avalanches propagating pretty wide, even on relatively low angle grain like this is definitely possible, especially as we get more women snow overnight.

So we've got to get more.

Can't wait to talk more about that.

We've got guests on hand tonight to talk about that danger and how Alaskans can prepare to more safely access and enjoy backcountry areas.

Eliot Gary is a guide and avalanche instructor and John Sykes, a forecaster who you just saw in that video with the Chugiak National Forest Avalanche Information Center.

Welcome, both of you.

Thank you.

Thanks for.

Having us.

Yeah, thanks for being here.

John, for people without backcountry experience such as myself, talk about the video we just saw is the takeaway that people should just stay away from the tin can area right now?

The short answer may be yes.

The conditions that we saw yesterday were pretty exceptional.

The there's different types of weak layers that can impact the mountains in avalanche conditions.

And they kind of develop throughout the season and come and go.

And the one that we saw yesterday is a really notorious weak layer called surface Hawk.

And it's kind of developed through the same process as like we get these feathery snow crystals on trees in town.

So yeah, in in the snow pack in the mountains, they kind of stand upright and can be a really problematic, weak layer if they're buried that way.

Because once we get more snow on top, the weight of a person can easily collapse that week layer.

And that's what creates an avalanche.

So once you start that collapse in the layer of surface or propagates out across the mountain slope and then releases what we call a slab avalanche, which is kind of a big plate of snow across the mountain.

And so, yeah, this particular type of weak layer tends to cause avalanches on lower angle terrain than people are used to.

And that's one of the big metrics that we use in kind of avalanche safety, is once you get up to above a 30 degree slope angle, avalanches are much more likely and they're most likely around 38 degrees.

So surface area is a tricky, weak layer because it tends to produce avalanches on lower angle slopes than people are used to.

So you can kind of catch people by surprise.

That is so fascinating that what we often refer to as horror for us that the big, feathery, beautiful for us that as you mentioned, collects in trees can actually be a layer that then can retain its height, even with snow piling on top of it.

Yeah, I could see why that would.

I mean that's an excellent visual image of why then that snow would be so unstable.

My goodness.

Yeah.

And it's it really depends how like a what surface it falls on if it's on a really soft surface underneath.

It's not that problematic.

But if it's on a firmer what we call bed surface, it's it becomes more slippery.

So give us kind of an overview of the current conditions in the areas where people like to go.

Hatcher Pass the turning in areas like like we were just talking about tin can, but corn biscuit eddies.

Yep.

So corn biscuit it, tin can.

Those are some of the most popular trailheads on the skier side of turning in pass, which is the forecast area that I work in.

And then we also have a whole nother area on the other side of the highway, Seattle Ridge, that is mostly motorized use.

So snow machines.

And so those those areas get a lot of traffic.

And currently the conditions are pretty dangerous there.

Honestly, it's we have this layer of buried surface here that's about two feet deep right now.

And then we had a lot of wind and snow overnight.

Not that much snow, but a lot of wind overnight, which make those layers more likely to produce avalanches.

We also have a weak layer that's buried closer to 4 to 6 feet deep.

That is unlikely for a person to trigger, but if they do, it can produce a very large avalanche.

And so these kind of conditions are what we call persistent slab conditions.

And it's tricky because you're actually unlikely to trigger an avalanche compared to other kind of avalanches that exist just on the surface.

But if you do trigger one, they tend to be really large and dangerous.

So it makes for a hard decision making environment for people who want to get into the mountains, because it's kind of like, well, you're not that likely to trigger an avalanche, but if you do, it's going to be really big and could potentially bury you or someone in your party.

So heat or people in another party exactly.

At a distance from you.

Well, you don't want to get you in here.

Now, your guide and avalanche instructor, what type of conditions have you been seeing this year and how does it compare to the past years?

Well, we we work in a lot of the same places that our forecasters are giving us information for.

So we've been dealing with the same problems that everybody else has for this time.

And, you know, our management strategy in these situations is to avoid those problems if, you know, we don't think the risk is acceptable for the group that we're taking out.

So in general, we've been sticking to lower angle slopes and not exposing ourselves to too much hazard at this point.

And that's been in turn again and that you get front range and a little bit at your pass as well.

So you can still get out there, but you just have to be very mindful of how high up you're going and where you're going.

Yeah, where you're going.

You know, the baseline is that if you have terrain that's steeper than 30 degrees, you can have avalanches on that terrain.

So, you know, if you have any question in your mind about if you're going to have avalanches or not or you can't get enough confidence, then it's not appropriate to be in those spots.

This week as I mentioned during the headline portion of the program, an avalanche near Girdwood hit the train tracks overnight.

Train couldn't stop, plowed into the debris.

Amazingly, no one was hurt.

Eliot, how surprised were you by that avalanche?

Did it make sense given the current conditions?

Yeah, you know, it's it's not an easy thing to predict when avalanches are going to happen.

So, you know, it's not a total surprise if you're you know, if there's conditions that can cause avalanches.

But, you know, if it was that easy to predict, people would not get caught an accident, you know?

So, yeah, it's hard.

Hard to know, right?

John, the Chugach page states that avalanche danger is high for today, above 2500 feet.

What does that mean for people who want to go back country skiing or snow machining?

Where can they go and feel fairly safe?

When is it just dangerous out there?

Right now.

Right now it's just dangerous.

When the avalanche danger is high, we actually recommend people avoid avalanche train.

So in this, because of those weak layers, the potential for very large avalanches that we're kind of putting that high danger out there, those really large avalanches that I talked about that could be like up to six feet deep.

Most exist at the higher elevations.

So that high danger that we issued this morning is for above 2500 feet.

So below 2500 feet, it's still likely to trigger an avalanche, but it's not likely to be that big.

And so you want to use techniques like what it was just talking about, traveling on the train, always being aware of if there's steep slopes above you or around you, because with these persistent weak layers, you can actually trigger an avalanche.

You could collapse a weak layer and trigger an avalanche somewhere else on the mountain.

So it's called a remote trigger.

But yeah, you can you can trigger an avalanche without being in steep terrain.

So it requires an extra level of caution when you're.

Yeah.

And awareness just terrain around you and also the groups around you like you just mentioned.

So is it just best right now for people to stick around Anchorage and avail themselves of local trails and if they want to get out?

Well, I mean, there you can always get out.

It's just being very careful about your terrain choices.

So I think the the it kind of comes down to your skill and confidence and being able to identify avalanche terrain.

It's kind of one of the fundamental things that we teach an avalanche education courses is what is avalanche training and where is it and how can you identify it?

And so if if somebody is confident in their skills, then they they can get into the mountains and still go skiing or go snow machining and avoid avalanche terrain.

But when the conditions are this dangerous, you have to be pretty confident in your terrain assessment skills.

How what do you and your team do to determine how to do the danger rating every day?

It's a process.

Yeah, it's a combination of a lot of things we do a lot of days in the field, like that video you showed that was I was in the field yesterday looking at the snow pack structure.

So we dig down through the snow pack and identify different layers and try and target layers that we think are most likely to produce avalanches.

And then we use a communication tool called avalanche problems to describe that in our forecast.

So Persistence Labs, I've mentioned a bunch that's one of our avalanche problem types and has kind of some general characteristics.

There are a bunch of other ones like Wind, slab storm slabs that have different characteristics.

So that's one tool that we use to communicate with the public.

The danger rating is kind of a more broad brush.

It doesn't specify exactly the type of avalanche.

It mostly just worries about how likely is it that you could trigger it and how likely and what size are they going to be?

And so it's kind of a simpler tool.

It's a color coded tool that's used just to yeah.

Give a high level of kind of the avalanche risk for the day.

And we determine that through a combination of our field and our field days, we also get observations from the public.

So like Eliot, when he's teaching classes could submit an observation on our website and then we take that information in and incorporate it into our decision process.

And then we also do mountain weather forecasting.

So it's kind of a combination of what are the conditions now and then, what do we think they're going to be tomorrow based on the weather that's going to come in?

Yeah, I looked at some of those observations.

That's really probably very helpful and really interesting to read through those.

Yeah, what people have observed, Eliot, how do you determine when it's safe to take clients into the backcountry?

Is there is there always an option or do you sometimes just have to call trips up?

We rarely have to call trips off.

You know, we're gathering information the same way that the forecasters are taking the previous observations and our experience in the field and being able to take we there's a lot of resources available for an avalanche forecast exists already weather station information and you know it narrows it down to like some places that we can go and then we decide like, you know, what's appropriate for the conditions that we have.

So we may not go to turn again one day we'll go to the to guide front range or we'll go to Hatcher.

It's really nice that we have so many different mountain ranges within easy acce we're definitely benefiting from the the variety, the snow packs that we have.

Actually, I think one thing that people who maybe don't have as much avalanche education don't appreciate is how different the avalanche conditions are in different mountain ranges.

So with that you get your national forest.

We really focus on Girdwood and turning in pass area and the conditions between there and Anchorage are totally different.

The snowpack is going to be very different.

We get a lot more snow there because it's closer to Prince William Sound where a lot of the storms are coming from and the Hatcher Pass is kind of a whole nother can of worms.

So I think because we don't have avalanche forecasts available everywhere, people try and take our product and infer what the conditions might be somewhere else.

But it really can be.

Erratic, dangerous.

Yeah.

And I imagine there's a big difference in the the moisture content within that snow from down by the Girdwood area to Hatcher Pass.

It's probably that makes quite a difference I would imagine.

Yeah it tends to be the Girdwood turning pass area tends to be more of a maritime snow climate is what we call it.

So more frequent storms and deeper snowpack which so it's a little counterintuitive, but deeper snowpack actually usually means safer avalanche conditions.

When we have a thinner snowpack like in Anchorage Front Range or Hatcher Pass, you're more likely to develop weak layers in the snowpack, and avalanche conditions can persist for longer.

So.

Eliot, talk about what people experience when they go through avalanche safety training with you.

How long does it take and what's involved?

There's a variety of different classes that are available to people seeking out avalanche education, which could range from a one day rescue course to at, you know, three or four day break one or rec level two, avalanche course and we're going over strategies to help if somebody does get caught in an avalanche, which is a baseline of information.

But then the rest of these courses are basically about how to avoid avalanches.

So you don't get caught in the first place because the the consequences of getting caught on avalanches can be quite high.

And so, you know, it just goes back to these baselines that we've been talking about already.

Identify an avalanche terrain, identify and, you know, red flag conditions for when the avalanche hazard is high.

And those are some pretty simple observations you can make in the field.

Things like recent avalanches, one thing, shooting cracks in the snowpack.

Any time you have a recent precipitous action, heavy precip, wind loading, a big temperature, warm ups.

And so those are the really important stuff.

And then, you know, you can get in the weeds pretty quick with the avalanche education if you want to.

But we try to just get people really dialed on the basics.

And then, you know, if they continue with their avalanche education, we go into a lot more detail as you get to these higher level courses.

To make sense, John, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, were we benefit here in the city of having all this glorious opportunity all around us.

There are so many areas near Anchorage where people can get into the backcountry and recreate.

How do you decide which areas to issue avalanche forecasts for.

The avalanche forecasts, regions are fixed.

So for us, because we're a part of the tour guides, National Forest are our forecast is limited by the boundaries of the Forest Service land and public land.

So the there's I think efforts currently underway to get an avalanche forecast product available for the front range, which would be through on or on.

Yeah, you get state park land and then Hatcher Pass is also on state park land.

So there is some kind of bureaucracy around land managers and where avalanche forecasts extend to.

And then the other big thing is just funding, you know, our for our avalanche center.

It's a combination of funding from the federal government through the Forest Service, but it's also matched by a nonprofit group.

Our friends of that, you got your avalanche center, collect donations from the community that fund a huge portion of our operating costs.

And so yeah, it's it's kind of a it's limited resources available and we try and distribute them as much as we can to create products mostly focused on high use areas where we think backcountry skiers in some areas are going to go, which turning in pass and after pass are the the highest use areas that folks from Anchorage tend to go.

The front range is closer but doesn't tend to get as much snow, so the riding and skiing conditions aren't typically as good.

So I think that's part of the reason why there's no I won't forecast there, but hopefully there will be in the near future.

And if folks want to get out to areas where there aren't forecasts, what do you recommend about what should they be looking for and what do they need to know?

These red flags that Elliot just mentioned are by far the biggest things.

So really, someone should probably take a class so they know how to read the snow.

Yep.

And something that catches people off guard is that summer trails are not necessarily place.

They're because they're safe from avalanches.

Like like flat top is a really good example.

A lot of people hike up flat top in Anchorage front range in the winter and that is like very full on avalanche terrain.

And so I think people they get used to going somewhere and they're kind of familiar with it in the summertime.

And so it feels safe, but it's a different beast in the winter time.

And if you have, you know, a steep slope and some snow storm or wind loading, you can easily have avalanche conditions there.

So, yeah, it comes back to kind of terrain above 30 degrees is likely to produce avalanches and then always keep an eye out for these red flags and avalanches shooting cracks in one thing, which are basically means you've collapsed a week later, but it's not steep enough to trigger an avalanche.

And then rapid precipitation and wind loading are really common weather events that spike avalanche danger.

When you take someone out Eliot can conditions change very quickly within a matter of hours if you go out and the sun rises or suddenly drops, how does that affect what you're doing?

We're we're always ready to pull the plug.

I mean, the best decision you can make often is just turn it around.

Going back the way you came, you know, things are great when you're out there right up to the point that they're not if you cause an avalanche.

So, you know, you got to remember what the consequences are.

May conservative decisions when you're out there and you know, we're just making assumptions about what we're going to see in the field, just like an avalanche forecast is.

And then when we actually get out there, we have to like ground truth.

Our ideas about what the snowpack is going to be like.

And if we find things that we don't like, we just make more conservative decisions.

Like the more uncertainty you have, the more conservative conservative you need to make those decisions.

So for both of you and Eliot, start us off.

How do you think about the risk of recreating an avalanche terrain?

What makes it worth it?

And how do you make sure you're mitigating the risk as much as possible?

Yeah, I mean, it's I still struggle to put my finger on exactly why I do these somewhat dangerous activities.

But, yeah, I seem to keep coming back to it and a lot of other people do too.

Yeah.

The challenge is that often, you know, as skiers were trying to go to the places where avalanches are the most likely 30 to 45 degree terrain.

And yeah, we're just trying to continue to fall back on these baseline like observations to make the decisions, whether it's going to be reasonable, do that or not.

There's just too much fun to avoid.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

I mean, it's, you know, people get cotton avalanches all the time and it's always an accident.

You know, the.

Have you been in an avalanche yourself?

Nothing.

Nothing significant.

I mean, we we're out in the terrain sometimes.

And we set off little avalanches on when we're in little, tiny pieces of terrain, like trying to figure out if there's a bigger avalanche hazard.

But you know that statistically, you know, if you get buried by an avalanche 50% of the time, that will end in a fatality.

So we are really trying to avoid those.

Yeah, that's a high level of risk.

Yeah.

5050 chance of not surviving.

How about you, John, in our final minute here, how do you think about mitigating that risk?

Why do you like it?

And have you been in an avalanche?

I have been in several avalanches, luckily, most of them on the smaller side of the spectrum.

But almost everyone that I know that spends a lot of time in the mountains has that same experience.

You expose yourselves to that, to the hazard enough that you're going to find something unexpected every now and then.

I think for me, going through some of those experiences of triggering avalanches or having friends trigger avalanches has made me really ratchet down my level of risk that I'm willing to take.

And so I try and be very selective about when I'm going to expose myself to the steeper slopes and times like we have right now, persistent avalanches that could be really large.

There's definitely not that time.

So it's important to try and be really patient with these conditions.

There's nothing we can do to change it, and these weak layers can last for weeks to months.

So it's got to be careful out there.

Thank you both so much for helping Alaskans understand, especially in this area, what they should do to keep themselves safe and still get out there.

Thanks so much for being here.

We are fortunate to have nearly endless opportunities to get into immense, beautiful wilderness right outside the city of Anchorage.

But wild places can be dangerous if you are inexperienced and unprepared for possible trouble.

Take the time to educate yourself.

And if you want to experience backcountry snow, take an avalanche safety class first so you can better prepare and protect yourself and others.

When you do know how to properly get out there, then get out there.

Be safe and have fun.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website.

We'll be back next week.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Laurie Townsend.

Good night.

Thanks.