Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort wants a howitzer
The resort is seeking to borrow the Army gun to prevent avalanches in Heather Canyon
Thursday, April 03, 2008
MARK LARABEE
The Oregonian
Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort is striving to use a howitzer to control avalanches in the upper section of Heather Canyon, a popular area that includes steep, expert terrain but is difficult for ski patrollers to safely manage.
Meadows is working with the U.S. Forest Service, which manages a program for ski areas, to borrow two M101A1s -- 105 mm howitzers -- from the U.S. Army. Under the program, the agency certifies the ski area and its training program. The ski area pays for the shells and maintains the weapons. Only one gun is used at a time. The second one is required for spare parts or if the primary weapon fails.
By the 2008-09 ski season, Meadows officials hope to be firing howitzer rounds into an area called Super Bowl and other locations in the upper reaches of Heather Canyon. Those slopes are often overloaded with snow and packed by wind.
Regularly triggering small avalanches in areas where snow builds up is the best way to prevent larger, catastrophic slides, experts agree.
Brandon Backman, ski patrol manager for Meadows, said the resort currently uses hand charges and a compressed-gas cannon called an Avalauncher to set explosives. Those methods, while effective, are less accurate than a howitzer.
Backman said the dud rate of the Avalauncher is 13 percent to 16 percent while the rate for the howitzer is 0.25 percent. And during heavy snowfall, when visibility is low, it's more difficult to assess whether their control work was effective, he said.
"The howitzer is just a change in how we deliver the charges," he said. "We're looking to upgrade -- to have better accuracy, better safety and better range."
Military artillery, including howitzers, is used for avalanche control at 10 U.S. ski areas. The guns are highly effective at triggering avalanches without endangering ski patrollers, experts say. Artillery is also widely used by state and railroad crews to control snow along major transportation corridors.
Doug Abromeit, director of the Forest Service National Avalanche Center, visited Meadows in February to see whether the resort needed a howitzer, and he thinks the weapon is justified.
"They have a challenging situation at best there, doing it the way they do it," he said. "It's physically impossible to get patrollers into the upper reaches (of Heather Canyon) safely. They've had some close calls."
"Big stuff happens"
The decision to use a cannon is something resort managers came to over time, Backman said, after seeing one large avalanche after another.
"Big stuff happens quite often," he said. "We often see these large slides coming into our permit area and parking themselves on groomed runs. We're charged with the task of making sure that doesn't happen in the middle of the day."
The ski area has yet to submit an official proposal to the Forest Service. A building would be needed to house the weapon and store ammunition, so a temporary road would have to be built to bring in cement trucks. The Forest Service must approve that portion of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The building is proposed for the 6,300-foot-level on Shooting Star Ridge, the southeastern ridge of Heather Canyon. Plans for the building are incomplete, but Backman said the structure will be about 400 square feet and will rise a story and a half.
Peggy Schwarz, executive director of the Mazamas, a Portland-based mountaineering group, said Meadows has approached the group but that it hasn't received a formal presentation.
"Based on my initial conversation with them, we would like to talk to them more about the visual and sound-level aspects of the new avalanche control program," she said.
The Snowrider Project, a Portland-based conservation group affiliated with the Surfrider Foundation, posted concerns on the Internet about Meadows' plans after representatives met with ski area officials.
The group is concerned about the possible environmental and visual impact of a new structure so high on the mountain. It is also worried about whether the howitzer would endanger backcountry skiers and mountain climbers beyond Meadows' boundary.
"We don't know what is the accuracy of the howitzer and at what point do you close down sections of the mountain to do avalanche control," Snowrider member Eric Jeffcoat said. "They are presenting this as a done deal. We're not saying we don't want it. We want them to explain to the public how they're going to address these issues."
Daina Bambe, district ranger for the Hood River Ranger District, said the agency would allow rounds only within the ski area, not into adjacent wilderness.
Two trained to fire
Meadows has been working on the idea for two years. Backman and another patroller learned to shoot a howitzer at a ski area in Nevada. He said that at least six patrollers, two teams of three, would be trained to fire the howitzer and that each round fired would be checked three times for accuracy and the size of the charge.
Abromeit, the Forest Service avalanche expert, is also chair of the Avalanche Artillery Users of North America Committee, an industry group that includes ski areas, transportation agencies and Canadian government officials. The group has developed U.S. military-endorsed training standards, guides and procedures for using artillery for avalanche control.
Abromeit said that accidents are possible but that the program has had a remarkable safety record since it began in 1948.
Two people, both gunners, have died. One was hit by the back blast from a recoilless rifle at Washington's Crystal Mountain ski area in the early 1960s. The area no longer uses artillery. In 1997, a Forest Service trainee at Alpine Meadows, Calif., died when a defective round exploded in a howitzer barrel as the gun was fired.
In 2005, an inexperienced Utah Department of Transportation crew used too large of a howitzer charge and overshot the target. The round exploded in a backyard, damaging the home. The incident led to more stringent operating and training procedures nationwide, Abromeit said.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/120719311057960.xml&coll=7
They were all solid when I did it but its been a few years.