I know I defend the sno-go as a way to access climbs that are a long way off. Especially in alaska, but this story is too much. During my 20+ years in the state I witnessed a ton of idiots both mechanized and muscle powered in the backcountry. Read this and have either a laugh or a sign of disbelief.
Reasons to go slow or fast in glacier snowmachining
(Published: March 23, 2003)
What you are about to read might sound incongruous at first, but it is undeniably true: There are safe ways in which to conduct many dangerous activities.
Flight provides the quickest and most obvious example. Flight, at least for humans, is inherently dangerous.
Everything we put in the air is locked in a losing battle with gravity. What goes up will inevitably come down.
The big questions are where and when.
Flight on commercial airlines in America today is the safest form of travel in the world because the aviation industry and the government have combined to develop safety standards to control how things go up and where they come down.
Thus, every day, tens of thousands of people can safely engage in a potentially deadly activity while experiencing almost no risk whatsoever.
Which brings me around to the point of this column: snowmobiling on glaciers.
It might well be the exception that proves the rules about there being safe ways to do dangerous things, because it's hard, if not impossible, to come up with a safe way to go snowmobiling on glaciers.
The results are predictable. Another snowmobiler died after falling into a crevasse last weekend. This one was a tourist from Colorado who plunged into Matanuska Glacier while being led on a tour.
Last year, the dead snowmobiler was a man from Eagle River who went into Spencer Glacier. Two more would have frozen to death in an icy tomb just miles from the site of that fatality last April if not for heroic rescue efforts by the 210th Rescue Squadron from the Kulis Air National Guard Base here in Anchorage.
I've talked to some of the pararescue specialists involved in that operation and others. These are people who earn their livings doing dangerous things almost daily. They tend to think snowmobiling on glaciers is generally nuts.
There might be a few places on a handful of glaciers in this state where the terrain is flat enough to make the gamble of glacier riding small. In most places, though, glaciers undulate, and every time they do, they are forced to bend.
Since ice doesn't bend well, cracks -- otherwise called crevasses -- tend to form in the ice. Over winter, the tops of those cracks fill with snow. This is both good and bad.
Good in the sense that snow bridges cover the crevasses to aid cross-glacier travel. Bad in the sense that the same snow bridges can fail, potentially sending people plummeting into crevasses.
For these reasons, knowledgeable mountaineers rope up before crossing glaciers. The rope provides a safety net if someone falls into a crevasse. The others on the rope can stop the fall and then use the rope to help extract their companion.
Granted, the system is not foolproof. Some crevasse falls have ended with people so tightly wedged into the crack that they could not be extracted. Noted climbing guide Mugs Stump died when he fell into a crevasse that then caved in on top of him.
In such circumstances, not even a rope can help. But there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of glacier travelers out there who have been saved because they were roped. Unfortunately, it is hard to travel by snowmobile while roped, and it would probably be dangerous to try.
When traveling by snowmobile, you want to keep the speed high enough that if you happen upon a weak snowbridge, you are across it and safe on the other side before it completely caves in. Avalanche expert Doug Fesler notes this creates a devil of a dilemma.
Ideally, someone traversing a glacier wants to travel slowly enough to carefully scan the terrain in search of any dips or depressions that might indicate hidden crevasses. But that is at odds with the idea of going fast enough on a snowmobile to cross over any crevasses that might open.
This is what makes snowmobiling on glaciers so dangerous as to be nutty. The fact that snowmobiles are noisy only adds to the problem. The roar of the engine covers any of those hollow sounds that can indicate open space under the snow.
The hurdles to safe travel here are significant.
If there is someone out there who knows of a safe way to snowmobile on glaciers, he'd be performing a major public service by letting the world know, because experienced glacier travelers are at a loss for ideas. Most agree this risky activity could be made safer if some people were to go out on foot, probe snowmobile routes for possible hidden crevasses and then flag safe trails for travel.
But who is going to do that or pay for it?
Given the unlikelihood of the development of safely marked snowmobile trails on Alaska glaciers, it is tempting to simply suggest that the government ban snowmobiling in these places. After all, if the U.S. Forest Service can keep boats off Portage Lake because some bureaucrat thinks it's unsafe to paddle there, why shouldn't the agency prevent people from engaging in the far more dangerous activity of riding snowmobiles on the glaciers above the lake?
The answer is that the Forest Service shouldn't be doing it either. It's really not the job of government to protect people from themselves. It's the job of government to protect people from one another.
Licensing snowmobile drivers, patrolling snowmobile trails and even setting speed limits for snowmobiles all fall into the latter category, so as to protect people on foot from snowmobiles, and snowmobilers from one another.
A strong argument can even be made that the state ought to be investigating the "guide'' who was supposedly leading the fatal Matanuska outing. The state does little or nothing to license and police outdoor guides. Legally, you can't charge someone to stitch up a gash in an arm without a medical license in Alaska, but you can make him pay to be taken on a stroll to death's doorstep without need for any license at all.
If some outdoor wilderness adventure guide wants to gamble with his life, that's one thing. But he or she shouldn't be gambling with the lives of other people. It seems the least the state could do is place a ban on guiding snowmobile tours on Alaska glaciers.
That would at least make it more difficult for the naive and inexperienced to kill themselves. It's possible that some could still decide to rent snowmobiles and wander off on glacial adventures on their own, but it's unlikely.
Meanwhile, for all the Joe Motorheads of Alaska, there is only one message that needs to be conveyed: If you want to engage in the crazily dangerous activity of glacial snowmobiling and kill yourself, that's your right. But how about thinking about your family and friends first?
They're the ones left behind to mourn this sort of stupidity. I feel for them, and I'm sure everyone else does too.
Daily News outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
