‘Treat it like the backcountry’: What to know about avalanche-prone zones at Washington ski areas

After an avalanche swept through an alpine basin on the edge of Crystal Mountain Resort on Saturday, killing a 66-year-old Issaquah man, ski patrol director Peter Dale spent the weekend fielding calls from local and national media about the mountainous terrain where it happened.

Silver Basin is a steep snow bowl below 6,796-foot Three Way Peak on the far end of a double-black diamond run called Southback, which resort skiers and snowboarders can only reach through gates controlled by the ski patrol. The ski-area boundary runs through the basin.

“We’ve struggled a little bit to explain that nuance with media who aren’t skiers,” Dale said Sunday. “I don’t want to say that it was ‘closed.’” (Crystal Mountain’s official statement referred to the slide location as a “closed area of the resort.”)

So if it wasn’t “closed,” then what, exactly, was the status of the area where an avalanche killed Robert Weisel and “partially or fully buried” four backcountry skiers with him — trapping another skier from the party who was able to escape — and how common are such zones at Western Washington ski areas?

The answer comes down to a key distinction between avalanche-prone terrain, where ski patrollers take proactive steps to reduce avalanche risk, versus slopes untouched by human efforts to decrease the chance of an avalanche.

In the rugged Cascades, the main ski areas — Alpental, Crystal, Mt. Baker and Stevens Pass — incorporate avalanche-prone terrain into their ski area boundaries, which are near out-of-bounds ridges, bowls and chutes that entice so-called freeride skiers, who chase steep ski lines and untouched powder beyond the tidy confines of designated trails and groomed runs.

To further complicate matters, during the narrow early season window — between the first significant snowfall and the full ramp-up of ski area operations — some avalanche-prone terrain will shift from one category to the other. Before the season gets fully underway, Silver Basin is public land whose recreational access is functionally no different from any other slope above the tree line in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest outside a developed ski area. (Ski areas have special-use permits from the U.S. Forest Service to run private ski areas on public land.)

The six backcountry skiers who traveled into Silver Basin on Dec. 11 started from the Crystal base area and followed the resort’s uphill travel policy, according to Dale. Even within sight and earshot of a busy ski resort, if ski patrol hasn’t started avalanche-control work for the season, “It should be treated like backcountry terrain and you should use the same level of caution you would use for any backcountry terrain,” Dale said.

The party caught in Saturday’s slide was prepared for backcountry travel and had avalanche education, said Dale, who encouraged skiers to treat this winter’s first U.S. avalanche fatality as a reminder to acquire the necessary skills, knowledge and equipment should they venture into the backcountry.

Once in the heart of the season, however, Crystal ski patrol conducts avalanche-control work in Silver Basin, including the use of explosives to preemptively trigger avalanches before opening the area to resort guests. At that point, uphill travelers are banished from heading into the inbounds side of the basin due to the risk of what is happening above them — whether avalanche-control work or downhill skiers.

At the top of Campbell Basin, a double-black diamond bowl framed by two of Crystal’s summits, ski patrol manages an access gate that determines whether resort guests can make the traverse behind 6,600-foot summit The Throne and into the alpine realm of steep couloirs and extreme skiing that includes Silver Basin. Even when open, signage at the gate recommends traveling with an avalanche beacon, shovel and probe in the event of a slide. During so-called powder cycles, when snow comes down in feet and not just inches, those gates may stay closed for days at a time.

A controlled-access policy likewise governs the most avalanche-prone slopes at Alpental, which constitutes the Summit at Snoqualmie’s toughest terrain. On the northwest edge of Alpental lurk the Back Bowls, a gnarled maze of cliffs and steep unmarked ski runs on the side of Denny Mountain guarded by two access gates. Stricter than Crystal, skiers and snowboarders there are required to register with ski patrol for an access card and show that they have an avalanche shovel, beacon and probe. An avalanche education course is encouraged but not required. Groups of three or more are recommended, with at least one skier already familiar with the Back Bowls’ tricky topography, where one wrong turn can leave a skier perched on the edge of a cliff.

With winter storms lacing the Cascades over the past week, the Back Bowls are now skiable, but they were not somewhere I chose to venture on a Monday ski touring outing given the day’s “considerable” avalanche hazard forecast from the Northwest Avalanche Center. Instead, I stayed in the developed portion of Alpental that’s marked with trail signs, while still carrying full avalanche gear, traveling with partners and watching carefully where I carved my turns.

Soon this gray area will cease to exist as Crystal and Alpental launch full operations for the 2021-22 season and uphill travelers will have to stay outside the developed ski area until resort operations end for the season (with the exception of Crystal’s designated uphill routes). Stevens Pass also contains avalanche-prone terrain inside the ski area boundary, marked in purple shading on the resort’s trail map. Some of these areas, like Cowboy Ridge, require a short bootpack — hiking through the snow while carrying your skis or snowboard — and are controlled by access gates.

Exit gates are another matter. These lead into the wilds of year-round backcountry terrain, where avalanche risk lurks without ski patrol’s efforts to tame the so-called “white dragon,” as the snowpack is known. Crystal has marked exit gates that lead into Mount Rainier National Park but they require full self-sufficiency to return to civilization — there are no chairlifts or plowed roads in winter at the bottom.

The Tunnel Creek area on the out-of-bounds side of Cowboy Ridge, where a 2012 avalanche killed three, is reached via an exit gate. At another gate on the resort’s eastern boundary, Stevens Pass installed an avalanche beacon checkpoint. At Mt. Baker Ski Area, exit gates lead to the breathtaking scenery of Shuksan Arm, which is no stranger to avalanches, but walking through the gate comes with a stern list of responsibilities. This relatively easy access — riding a chairlift, then a short hike — have earned these areas their own moniker: “sidecountry” in the U.S. and “slackcountry” in Canada.

For professionals, however, those terms are a distinction without a difference from a risk perspective. “Just because it’s easy to get to doesn’t make it safer,” said Dallas Glass, Northwest Avalanche Center’s deputy director. “We consider that terrain backcountry.”

The same goes for preseason powder before our local ski resorts are fully up and running. When an Alpental ski patroller was asked on Monday if there was anywhere a group should avoid, even in what will soon be crawling with lift-serviced skiers and riders, he shrugged as he skied by and said: “Treat it like the backcountry.”