E-mail Story   Print Story

 

One year and one day after two men died from an avalanche while backcountry skiing in the Canyon Creek area of the Flathead National Forest, people began to file into the U.S. Forest Service headquarters in Kalispell for an avalanche awareness class. More than a hundred people eventually crammed into the room, forcing the stragglers to stand in the back after the last chairs were taken. Accustomed to class sizes of between 10 and 20 people, attendance for the lecture series was the largest the instructor Stan Bones has ever seen.

Newfound Respect

Among those packed into the room was 26-year-old Eric “Dex” Hrubecky, a snowboarder, and his friends.

Will Kulick, center, follows a transceiver signal down Big Mountain while searching for a "victim" during an avalanche awareness drill at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

“We were in the same place as the guy last year when he died,” Hrubecky said, referring to last year’s fatal avalanche on a popular slope outside the boundaries of Whitefish Mountain Resort. “We don’t want that to happen this year.”

Hrubecky has not ventured into the backcountry since the accident, and he admitted he was not sufficiently knowledgeable about avalanches then to have been there in the first place. “I was quite ignorant about it, actually,” he said. But he hoped the class would give him a foundation to make smart decisions when traveling in search of the deep, effortless powder turns that draw so many athletes out-of-bounds and into more dangerous terrain.

As evidenced by attendance at this avalanche class, Hrubecky is among the many skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers in the Flathead eyeing the backcountry with a newfound respect and wariness this winter – and with good reason. On top of the awareness raised by last year’s accident, unusual snowfall patterns throughout the Northern Rockies have, until recently, made for highly unpredictable and dangerous snowpack conditions.

While most powder hounds have been cautious enough to stay out of the backcountry for the first month or so of winter, the dry weather and settling snowpack over the last few weeks is enticing them back. But just because the snow may be safer than it was doesn’t mean the conditions are safe. In many parts of the state, they remain deadly. Last weekend three snowmobilers died in three separate accidents across southwest Montana. And as backcountry traffic here in Northwest Montana increases, ski patrollers and safety officials are preparing for their busy season to begin.