The Utah Avalanche Center and Vail EpicPromise have partnered to support backcountry safety as leaders in Park City snowsports and community safety.
The partnership with Vail EpicPromise aims to increase support for the center’s mission to provide publicly available information and resources to backcountry adventurers.
“This collaboration comes at a crucial time as the region experiences new snowfall on a fragile snowpack, thus elevating the importance of educating outdoor enthusiasts about the potential dangers of backcountry terrain,” said Kate Waller, development director at the center.
Park City Mountain has supported the use of public lands along the Park City Ridgeline for backcountry users with gates to access terrain outside of the resort space. Spaces that are designated unsafe are closed off with a ropeline, though the resort has struggled with folks disobeying closures to a point of interrupting operations and presenting unnecessary dangers to staff and visitors.
As such, the collaborative emphasis on sidecountry awareness is incredibly important, particularly as the community continues to grapple with the season’s unpredictable and, specifically unsafe, snowpack.
Three backcountry skiers experienced a close call earlier this month when an avalanche in Dutch Draw fully buried one individual and partially buried a second on Feb. 8. The skiers had ducked a ropeline at the top of Park City Mountain’s 9990 lift.
“The sidecountry – areas accessed by exiting a resort gate – is still backcountry, and the same avalanche hazards exist as in more remote areas. Many skiers and riders may not realize that once they leave the resort, they are entering uncontrolled terrain where avalanche risk is real,” said Waller.
To address this, Utah Avalanche Center and Park City Mountain are working together to ensure riders have the necessary information, training and resources to make informed decisions and stay safe.
“There is no such thing as sidecountry. Anytime that you leave a ski resort boundary, you are stepping into the backcountry. It’s an area with no avalanche control with a natural, raw snowpack,” said Nikki Champion, a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center. She compiled the Dutch Draw accident report in the days following the avalanche.
“The Park City region line in itself is often hit with storms in different weather patterns that might see less snowfall than the Cottonwoods for example. This makes for a shallower snowpack, prolonging persistent weak layers with less snowfall and less insulation,” said Champion.
With problems in the snowpack often lingering in the Park City Ridgeline, the partnership between the resort and the Utah Avalanche Center is particularly weighty with folks often venturing into avalanche terrain unprepared. The center has a continued line of communication with all of the resorts in the area, sharing information about forecasting and avalanche observations every morning and evening.
“That communication sharing platform is huge for somewhere like the Park City Ridgeline, and then in the case of an accident, Park City patrol is often some of the first to respond. They’re equipped with a dog team, and they work really closely with us in accident investigation,” said Champion.
Park City Mountain patrol teams play a pivotal role in emergency rescues and providing backcountry access, though this becomes more and more challenging as folks continue to disobey closures.
“This is a huge, huge issue we are facing right now, and it’s a blatant disregard for our closures. That’s avalanche closures, resort boundaries and regular closures. When that happens, we have to stop everything we’re doing to resolve it,” said Andy Van Houten, director of ski patrol at Park City Mountain.
The impact of disregarding closures is significant, and it leads to more safety concerns for all folks involved. When emergencies occur in the Dutch area, outside 9990, Van Houten will shut down the in-resort zone entirely because of the amount of resources required to lend a hand in rescues or recoveries.
“Once you leave the resort, you are out of the resort and responsible for your own safety and the safety of your party and you need a lot of knowledge going into it,” said Emily McDonald, communications director at Park City Mountain. “We have a lot of great resources, like the Utah Avalanche Center, that provide education and training and we want to encourage anyone who goes through the proper gates to be completely prepared for what they may encounter.”