TheSnowpit.com News Blog

• BNSF denied bombing rights to Glacier NP
• Wasatch gets to shoot, but not Gazex

As the start of the season approaches, ski resorts from Mammoth to Banff are opening their first runs, Gallatin NF and Crested Butte have released their first advisories, and the debates over avalanche control methods begin appearing again in the media.

You may remember my note of the 'shells vs sheds' debate from last season between BNSF Railway and Glacier National Park. After four total years of debating, the National Park service has 'issued a final rejection' to BNSF, telling them to sack up, build some sheds, and stop shooting at the wildlife.

Not all decisions are so logical however. Through a loophole, Alta is allowed to do control work with Howitzers mid-canyon in the Wasatch, but they are not allowed to install Gazex exploders. That is, they are allowed to lob things to within the wilderness areas from without, but they are not allowed to install any actual artillery in the wilderness. Gazex exploders have been used successfully around the world from Europe to Teton Pass.

• Ice avalanche on K2 results in eleven fatalities
• Modeling of global warming's effect on snowmelt timing shows changes over last 50 years
• Ice and snow research 'SnoMote' robot reaches third generation of development

I learned about the tradgedy on K2 while I was emotionally and environmentally a million miles away - kayaking in the San Juan Islands. The news has since turned to other human interest stories surrounding the disaster, but originally the story took over the headlines. Accounts vary, as aptly pointed out by this Rock and Ice article, but it seems that some (2-4) climbers perished in the actual serac collapse, and a number of others were stranded above that area as the serac had ripped away a great deal of fixed line.

The eleven resulting fatalities from the avalanche and aftermath eventually secured the incident as the worst in K2's history. The worst avalanche incidents in history in North America both (oddly enough) occurred in 1910, one at Roger's Pass holding the record in Canada (62 fatalities of workers clearing a slide), and one near Steven's Pass in Washington holding the record for the United States (96 fatalities of passengers in stopped trains). The United States avalanche was attributed to the warming after the storm.

Of course, mountaineering-specific avalanche incidents are scattered across history as well. The K2 incident also reminded me of the 1981 tradgedy on Rainier where 11 climbers were buried under a falling serac on the Ingraham glacier, which is still considered the worst mountaineering accident in the States. An avalanche on Lenin took 40 lives in 1990. And the list goes on. Many are calling the K2 incident the worst in history, but tradgedy in the mountains goes as far back as our history of them does. However, it does not seem any less horrible because of that. May the K2 climbers rest in peace; what a terrible incident.

Though predicting the melting, moving, and falling of seracs like the one on K2 remains one of the worlds unsolved mysteries, scientists continue to track the timing and melting of the much more predictable seasonal snowpack. In a recent study on modeling the timing of the snowmelt year after year, the snowpack seems to have crept up to melting 10-15 days earlier over the past 50 years. Snowmelt affects many, many things from the timing of flood and peak runoff, to how water gets stored for use in the summer.

Then, combining the press given to both global warming and the Olympics, a lot of positive press is actually being given to China on their efforts to go green. Projects include building a wholly zero-carbon city named Dongtan expected to hold 500,000 people by 2050. In addition, they're allowing various studies by air to study the effect of the Olympics on pollution. In fact, the country as a whole has reduced pollution production to protect the athletes, reducing industrial activity by 30 percent, and automobile use by half.

Of course beyond global warming, snow research continues year round. This time, news hails from the robotics sector. Researchers from Penn State and Georgia Tech have built small mobile snowmachine sensors. The project, inspired by next-generation plans for the Mars rover, has created robots called SnoMotes which are two feet long by one foot wide and which work as a sensor network while moving across snowy areas too dangerous for humans. Sensor networks are in and of themselves very cool research (my husband is currently working on debugging and logging for the SOS sensor network operating system) and to have such a network which also must travel across trecherous terrain is very cool indeed.