Happy New Year from the Patrol and Snow Safety Departments A message to all Alyeska skiers and riders: This year our October, November, and early December weather pattern left us with a blanket of sugary, faceted snow on the entire mountain. In addition, several wind events during this time created hard slab conditions on top of the sugary, faceted snow in many of our avalanche starting zones. On December 24, a large change in the weather pattern began a stream of moisture, wind, and snowy weather that has left us with over 190" of snow and 18" of snow-water equivalent. This significant cycle of weather has created avalanche conditions not seen by many of the old-timers around here for 20+ years. In light of this, it has been very challenging to keep up with avalanche mitigation measures so we can safely set up the mountain for the public. Many of you have likely seen the myriad of recent avalanche warnings and High Danger levels posted by the local avalanche center. We wanted to share a few anecdotes and stories with those of you familiar with the terrain here at Alyeska to illustrate the unique nature of the problems we are dealing with this year. On Christmas Day mid-morning while we were assessing the regular area, we discovered a natural avalanche on the North Face. This slide had a crown of approximately 5-7 feet deep and propagated from the area near Lolo's over past Pandora's and Ragdoll. This slide ran 90% of the climax release for this path and deposited ...

• published: 04 Jan 2013
• views: 10289
• author: AlyeskaResort