Colorado Weather Discussion Thread

[stfu&gbtw]

You have created the idea that when they decided to send everyone down the hill, that it meant the natural slide danger to AB/6 was suddenly discovered to be too high and everyone needed to be gone instantly so that explosive reduction could be carried out immediately. That is the strawman on which all your suppositions are based. If that was true, the solution is NOT your highly resource intensive, complex, staged refugee caravan. The answer would have been to close the road and ski area hours earlier!

But luckily, your assumptions are not correct... because the decision was made in anticipation, not reaction. That is the entire purpose of forecasting.

The closure came because forecasters anticipated the natural slide danger rising, and it is known that there is a delay to clear the area (and limited daylight). So they acted. And that is why things worked out well.


You realize the big accident was 10 miles away from AB by Lake Dillon between Keystone and Dillon, NOT between Keystone and A-Basin... right?
Plenty of resources were applied to that pileup by Lake Dillon. From the reports I received, there were no wrecks between AB and Keystone.


HA! Right! There are too many problems with that idea to list and no reason to try it anyway. I've never heard of that being done anywhere, ever.

What an odd day! First I drive to AB in an hour... Then I get 10 escalator rides off the pali... Now it's breaking bluebird, and when I stop to drop a layer, what do I find? The rare double-strawman argument! I think you'll find that everything I've written contradicts what you're claiming I said... For instance, a staged evac following a couple of hours of prep isn't exactly consistent with "everyone needed to be gone instantly so that explosive reduction could be carried out immediately". I get that you're personally offended that I'm criticising this decision. I'm sure you really like and respect several of the people who made it. Guess what..? So do I. Doesn't mean I agree with everything they do, nor do they always agree with me.

Anyway, I'll be happy to continue this debate with you after the lifts close. Have a nice day!

[KenJongIll]

What an odd day! First I drive to AB in an hour... Then I get 10 escalator rides off the pali... Now it's breaking bluebird, and when I stop to drop a layer, what do I find? The rare double-strawman argument! I think you'll find that everything I've written contradicts what you're claiming I said... For instance, a staged evac following a couple of hours of prep isn't exactly consistent with "everyone needed to be gone instantly so that explosive reduction could be carried out immediately". I get that you're personally offended that I'm criticising this decision. I'm sure you really like and respect several of the people who made it. Guess what..? So do I. Doesn't mean I agree with everything they do, nor do they always agree with me.

Anyway, I'll be happy to continue this debate with you after the lifts close. Have a nice day!

You must really take skiing for granted to have an internet pissing match in the middle of,it....

[summit]

For instance, a staged evac following a couple of hours of prep isn't exactly consistent with "everyone needed to be gone instantly so that explosive reduction could be carried out immediately".

First you were arguing for bombing prof with a lot full of cars being better than evacing... even though they couldn't do that...

Now you want a staged evac.... but why do you need that unless the danger is too high to just close and send people down? You don't and it wasn't.

Why would you need to prep for hours to close and evac? If you know that it is going to be needed, then you close things before the point of needing fancy resource intensive coordinated plans in order to manage risk (and those resources are needed elsewhere).

[The SnowShow]

Holy fuck Loveland was deep this AM. Was the first down Avi Bowl coughing on faceshots the whole way down. No wind and much fluffier today! Now it's bluebird.

[summit]

Holy fuck Loveland was deep this AM. Was the first down Avi Bowl coughing on faceshots the whole way down. No wind and much fluffier today! Now it's bluebird.

That looks awesome... sorry I had to stay in today! Ah well... was out 4 in a row and I'll be out 4 in a row.

[stfu&gbtw]

[Name Redacted]

I just skied Gauthier and Waterfall a few times today. It was good. Rolled in later but got a spot right up front in the lower lot. Calm before the storm I guess. Weekend should be nuts. Definitely riding BC till Tuesday.

[simple]

Rode lifts today. Glorious powder and the sun came out. What a storm!!!! Saw some TGR peeps at Loveland. Seems most of them have beards and skis. Sup with dat?

[The SnowShow]

That looks awesome... sorry I had to stay in today! Ah well... was out 4 in a row and I'll be out 4 in a row.

This whole 2 weeks has been insane. Just fluffier today on the Divide which has been nice. We've been so spoiled, I don't remember how to ski a groomer.

There was patrol activity on Chair 9 for those interested.

I70 traffic is gonna be nutty Sat.

[smmokan]

Contrary to popular belief, I still ski.... mostly so I can go out and take photos, to be honest. I hit Loveland this morning for a few hours with the ON3P crew, and it was very good. I can't believe how nice it was up there- absolutely no wind other than the very top of Chair 4.

[hawkgt]

nice pics.

no wind on 4? un-possible

[ColMan]

Zuma delivered this morning after being shut down since Tuesday. Nice to have good vis and no wind up there.

[alect47]

Holy fuck Loveland was deep this AM. Was the first down Avi Bowl coughing on faceshots the whole way down. No wind and much fluffier today! Now it's bluebird.

Hey, that's me that you can just barely see at the top of that pic! Was this taken in west/east ropes? Today was awesome!!

[Soups]

[emoji15]

Would like to see this year overlaid with 2011

Just from eyeballing, we're about 2 weeks behind 2011.

Doing a comparison as of today for the Upper Colorado it looks like we are currently sitting at about 12" SWE and at this time mid-January 2011 we were at about 11" SWE. More to come. All this and it really just started to snow basically a month ago. Oh yeah.

[rmnpsplitter]

Today was amazing. Tomorrow should be better. Holy shit what a cycle!

[zartagen]

Doing a comparison as of today for the Upper Colorado it looks like we are currently sitting at about 12" SWE and at this time mid-January 2011 we were at about 11" SWE. More to come. All this and it really just started to snow basically a month ago. Oh yeah.

Hell yeah, we made up that 2 weeks in a matter of days. What a storm this is!

[The SnowShow]

Hey, that's me that you can just barely see at the top of that pic! Was this taken in west/east ropes? Today was awesome!!

Yep!! That was in west/east ropes. Did you get down into Tunnel Face? That was great too!

[montanaskier]

Hell yeah, we made up that 2 weeks in a matter of days. What a storm this is!

Rode Grouse this morning with a troller who said Vail and BC were just about at average for the year, maybe a tad above. Still pretty crazy considering it was dirt then boom.

[alect47]

Yep!! That was in west/east ropes. Did you get down into Tunnel Face? That was great too!

Honestly I'm fairly new to loveland and don't pay attention to what anything is called. I skied the open terrain that ends in the traverse to the tunnel (sounds like it would be called tunnel face) a few times and it was super fun!

[The SnowShow]

^^^Yep, that's it! Fun area.

[The SnowShow]

CAIC report on the slide that took out the house by the Maid of Orleans mine.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KptgC9jE3sI

[stfu&gbtw]

You have created the idea that when they decided to send everyone down the hill, that it meant the natural slide danger to AB/6 was suddenly discovered to be too high and everyone needed to be gone instantly so that explosive reduction could be carried out immediately. That is the strawman on which all your suppositions are based.

....


But luckily, your assumptions are not correct... because the decision was made in anticipation, not reaction.

...

You realize the big accident was 10 miles away from AB by Lake Dillon, NOT between Keystone and A-Basin... right?

...

There are too many problems with that idea to list and no reason to try it anyway. I've never heard of that being done anywhere.

First you were arguing for bombing prof with a lot full of cars being better than evacing... even though they couldn't do that...

Now you want a staged evac.... but why do you need that unless the danger is too high to just close and send people down? You don't and it wasn't.

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

First and foremost, it is documented that the decision to close was not made in anticipation of avy risk, but in response to observed natural slide activity, as per Al's blog post.

Some tremendous avalanches have been occurring near us. Both CDOT and CAIC had very significant concerns about avalanche paths along Highway 6.

http://arapahoebasin.blogspot.com/20...y-at-1-pm.html

Given the perception of existing risk, with guests at the ski area, mitigating exposure to the risk was an immediate issue, not just a developing one. If the risk of slides along 6, and potentially into the Early Riser lot, was the motivating factor for the decision to evacuate, as was indicated in Al's post, then moving guests into the parking lot, and onto the road does not minimize risk - it contributes to it.

In these circumstances, the only plausible reason for choosing to evacuate (thereby moving people onto the road, and into at least three significant slide paths) is the expectation that people can evacuate before a slide occurs. That expectation presumes that expeditious travel along 6 is essentially a given. We know from experience that this isn't the case. Far less severe weather than was occurring on Tuesday frequently causes accidents and delays on 6. Adding the especially poor driving conditions, and the stress which naturally accompanies being told to "evacuate" only reduces the likelihood that everyone would succeed in driving down the pass safely. Because 6 is a two lane road, already narrower than usual due to the amount of snow, even a minor accident can easily result in the road becoming impassable. Once the road becomes impassable, not only has the duration of exposure to avalanche risk for those guests on the road increased (the same risk that we're ostensibly trying to reduce), but the limitation of road access greatly increases the challenge of responding to an emergency - further increasing the likelihood that the impact of an emergency will be exacerbated by a prolonged response time.

While it would not be reasonable to presume that 6 posed a reliable means of quickly evacuating the ski area in any case, in this case the road was already closed ten miles west of the abasin, due to a 20 car accident on a far less challenging stretch of highway. It may be that the decision makers were not aware of that - although failing to confirm that the road you're planning to use as an evacuation route is actually open is an egregious error in emergency response execution. But even in the event that the Keystone accident occurred while the abasin evac was already underway, it only further highlights the fact that expecting 6 to be reliably passable in blizzard conditions is an error in judgement, and if no alternatives existed, other measures should have been taken to mitigate those risks as well.

Regarding potential responses...

If it is the case that immediate impending risk of avalanche along 6 and in the Early Riser lot requires an emergency response, then guests should be prevented from entering the highway and parking lot while the risk is mitigated. If the only reasonable means of mitigating risk along the highway is to use explosives to conduct control, then guests should remain at the ski area while that is attempted. While the fact that there are guests' cars parked in the potential slide path is obviously sub-optimal, the risk of an avalanche sliding to the highway (happens every year) is far greater than the risk of it sliding into parking lot (happens every ~25 years). Therefore the risk to the vehicles, and more importantly to human life, is far lower if a slide is triggered while the guests are sheltered, and the vehicles are empty and parked in the lot, as compared to the risk of a slide occurring by any means while those cars are occupied and gridlocked on the highway. That being said, as the Prof and other nearby avy paths are not within range of the abasin avalaunchers, and the normal method of dropping bombs onto the Prof from a helicopter isn't a viable option in a blizzard, evacuation may be the only viable option. But if that is the case, in order for the evacuation to have its intended effect of reducing risk, it needs to be planned and executed using the same principles as are applied to other unavoidable travel in avalanche terrain, such as:

1. To whatever degree possible, ensuring the intended route is open to begin with.
2. Staging support along the route as feasible to minimize the duration of exposure when problems occur.
3. Sheltering people from exposure until the route is clear, and then moving through the exposed area as quickly as possible.
4. Managing the flow of travel to minimize the number of people exposed during a delay.
5. Continually evaluating the conditions and adapting as required.

In this instance, a call to SCSO, CSP, or possibly just to Keystone management may have been enough to determine that 6 was already closed. But even were it open to begin with, it would have been reasonable to expect the flood of traffic resulting from an unmanaged evacuation from abasin to cause an accident closing the road in and of itself. To effectively reduce the risk of someone being injured or killed - the reason for undertaking the evac to begin with - preparation would include ensuring tow trucks were within range to move disabled or stuck vehicles, staging basic equipment (like a skid and a BH/FEL) to move snow if required, ensuring that emergency responders were within range to provide medical care, and managing the flow of guest departure to prevent traffic backing up behind an otherwise potentially minor accident, which would create prolonged risk exposure to more potentially serious problems for a greater number of people. So, while you're correct that bombing the prof while the parking lot is full of cars, and managing a staged evacuation are not similar responses., you missed that the staged evac response was suggested as an alternative to direct avalanche control, since avy control was not likely to be feasible within a realistic time frame.

The fact that more serious problems did not occur on Tuesday was not the result of a carefully reasoned decision designed to address and mitigate the perceived risks. It was either luck that the observed conditions that motivated the response did not result in more serious consequences, or possibly that the observations were misinterpreted, and the risk analysis was overestimated from the beginning. Regardless, the bottom line is this - if the evacuation was undertaken in response to immediate avalanche danger on and around US 6, closing the ski area and sending the guests out onto the road in blizzard conditions with no preparation for their safe passage does not reduce the risk - it increases it. It's a great result that Tuesday passed without any real consequences... But drawing the conclusion that the actions taken on Tuesday were the cause of that result would only increase the likelihood that the next similar situation will elicit the same response, and eventually, we won't be so lucky.

Any good risk analysis process will look back on an event like this one to see where the response can be corrected or improved. That analysis starts with ensuring that your assumptions are reasonable, and express themselves in the ways you expected them to. Only analyzing the event in search of confirmation that a positive or neutral outcome was the result of the decisions that were made starts the clock on the eventual catastrophe that results from the plan's underlying flaws. If evacuation in response to local avalanche danger becomes the standard response, we may one day find this has become abasin's o-ring. While the effort in planning for these events and execution of those plans may seem excessive, some of the circumstances which could result from repeating Tuesday's actions could be really catastrophic.

Just sayin...

Skiing was awesome today... more tomorrow.

[RonMexico]

What is the point of all of this (^) shit? Do you just want somebody to say that you are right?

Ok - you're right.

Can you stop now?

[Name Redacted]

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

First and foremost, it is documented that the decision to close was not made in anticipation of avy risk, but in response to observed natural slide activity, as per Al's blog post.

http://arapahoebasin.blogspot.com/20...y-at-1-pm.html

Given the perception of existing risk, with guests at the ski area, mitigating exposure to the risk was an immediate issue, not just a developing one. If the risk of slides along 6, and potentially into the Early Riser lot, was the motivating factor for the decision to evacuate, as was indicated in Al's post, then moving guests into the parking lot, and onto the road does not minimize risk - it contributes to it.

In these circumstances, the only plausible reason for choosing to evacuate (thereby moving people onto the road, and into at least three significant slide paths) is the expectation that people can evacuate before a slide occurs. That expectation presumes that expeditious travel along 6 is essentially a given. We know from experience that this isn't the case. Far less severe weather than was occurring on Tuesday frequently causes accidents and delays on 6. Adding the especially poor driving conditions, and the stress which naturally accompanies being told to "evacuate" only reduces the likelihood that everyone would succeed in driving down the pass safely. Because 6 is a two lane road, already narrower than usual due to the amount of snow, even a minor accident can easily result in the road becoming impassable. Once the road becomes impassable, not only has the duration of exposure to avalanche risk for those guests on the road increased (the same risk that we're ostensibly trying to reduce), but the limitation of road access greatly increases the challenge of responding to an emergency - further increasing the likelihood that the impact of an emergency will be exacerbated by a prolonged response time.

While it would not be reasonable to presume that 6 posed a reliable means of quickly evacuating the ski area in any case, in this case the road was already closed ten miles west of the abasin, due to a 20 car accident on a far less challenging stretch of highway. It may be that the decision makers were not aware of that - although failing to confirm that the road you're planning to use as an evacuation route is actually open is an egregious error in emergency response execution. But even in the event that the Keystone accident occurred while the abasin evac was already underway, it only further highlights the fact that expecting 6 to be reliably passable in blizzard conditions is an error in judgement, and if no alternatives existed, other measures should have been taken to mitigate those risks as well.

Regarding potential responses...

If it is the case that immediate impending risk of avalanche along 6 and in the Early Riser lot requires an emergency response, then guests should be prevented from entering the highway and parking lot while the risk is mitigated. If the only reasonable means of mitigating risk along the highway is to use explosives to conduct control, then guests should remain at the ski area while that is attempted. While the fact that there are guests' cars parked in the potential slide path is obviously sub-optimal, the risk of an avalanche sliding to the highway (happens every year) is far greater than the risk of it sliding into parking lot (happens every ~25 years). Therefore the risk to the vehicles, and more importantly to human life, is far lower if a slide is triggered while the guests are sheltered, and the vehicles are empty and parked in the lot, as compared to the risk of a slide occurring by any means while those cars are occupied and gridlocked on the highway. That being said, as the Prof and other nearby avy paths are not within range of the abasin avalaunchers, and the normal method of dropping bombs onto the Prof from a helicopter isn't a viable option in a blizzard, evacuation may be the only viable option. But if that is the case, in order for the evacuation to have its intended effect of reducing risk, it needs to be planned and executed using the same principles as are applied to other unavoidable travel in avalanche terrain, such as:

1. To whatever degree possible, ensuring the intended route is open to begin with.
2. Staging support along the route as feasible to minimize the duration of exposure when problems occur.
3. Sheltering people from exposure until the route is clear, and then moving through the exposed area as quickly as possible.
4. Managing the flow of travel to minimize the number of people exposed during a delay.
5. Continually evaluating the conditions and adapting as required.

In this instance, a call to SCSO, CSP, or possibly just to Keystone management may have been enough to determine that 6 was already closed. But even were it open to begin with, it would have been reasonable to expect the flood of traffic resulting from an unmanaged evacuation from abasin to cause an accident closing the road in and of itself. To effectively reduce the risk of someone being injured or killed - the reason for undertaking the evac to begin with - preparation would include ensuring tow trucks were within range to move disabled or stuck vehicles, staging basic equipment (like a skid and a BH/FEL) to move snow if required, ensuring that emergency responders were within range to provide medical care, and managing the flow of guest departure to prevent traffic backing up behind an otherwise potentially minor accident, which would create prolonged risk exposure to more potentially serious problems for a greater number of people. So, while you're correct that bombing the prof while the parking lot is full of cars, and managing a staged evacuation are not similar responses., you missed that the staged evac response was suggested as an alternative to direct avalanche control, since avy control was not likely to be feasible within a realistic time frame.

The fact that more serious problems did not occur on Tuesday was not the result of a carefully reasoned decision designed to address and mitigate the perceived risks. It was either luck that the observed conditions that motivated the response did not result in more serious consequences, or possibly that the observations were misinterpreted, and the risk analysis was overestimated from the beginning. Regardless, the bottom line is this - if the evacuation was undertaken in response to immediate avalanche danger on and around US 6, closing the ski area and sending the guests out onto the road in blizzard conditions with no preparation for their safe passage does not reduce the risk - it increases it. It's a great result that Tuesday passed without any real consequences... But drawing the conclusion that the actions taken on Tuesday were the cause of that result would only increase the likelihood that the next similar situation will elicit the same response, and eventually, we won't be so lucky.

Any good risk analysis process will look back on an event like this one to see where the response can be corrected or improved. That analysis starts with ensuring that your assumptions are reasonable, and express themselves in the ways you expected them to. Only analyzing the event in search of confirmation that a positive or neutral outcome was the result of the decisions that were made starts the clock on the eventual catastrophe that results from the plan's underlying flaws. If evacuation in response to local avalanche danger becomes the standard response, we may one day find this has become abasin's o-ring. While the effort in planning for these events and execution of those plans may seem excessive, some of the circumstances which could result from repeating Tuesday's actions could be really catastrophic.

Just sayin...

Skiing was awesome today... more tomorrow.

tl;dr I'd suggest the same for everyone else. You can't just beat someone over the head with words. Glad you went skiing, you should do that more and ^^^this less.

[summit]

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.
<snip>

Long, well written, but wrong. Your argument is based on a questionable (wrong) interpretation of one sentence from a blog. Even if you were right, you still can't grasp the appropriate response to the variable risk. The bottom line is risk was rising. So had they waited 3-4 hours to free up the plows, police officers, ambulances, tow trucks, and the tooth fairy your plan called for, it would have been dark and the danger might have risen to the point where where there wasn't another 3-4 hours to send people down the road in tiny groups. Then you end up sheltering 1000+ people for 36 hours+ with probably no resupply. What they did was better.

And that is my last post on the subject.