Avalanche News - 2017

Avalanche News Stories - 2017

January 3, 2017 - "Avalanche Roller" Provides Alternative to Boot Packing

Copper Mountain is using a new piece of equipment called an avalanche roller, which packs the snow down and breaks it apart before an avalanche does it unexpectedly. It’s the kind of work normally done in ski boots with a group of people packing down the slopes. Now the roller is let down steep slopes from a snowcat. More ...

March 2, 2017 - New Avalanche and Snow Burial Practice Guidelines

With the growing popularity of backcountry snow activities, it is increasingly important to understand the best techniques for avalanche rescue. The Wilderness Medical Society has issued new practice guidelines to help medical professionals, as well as the public, understand the latest techniques and recommendations for avalanche risk management and rescue protocols. More ...

April 20, 2017 - Climate change: the people in Norway living in fear of avalanches

Residents in Longyearbyen, midway between Norway and the North Pole, are living with a new danger - avalanches. When there is trouble it usually happens far away, deep in the remote terrain of the Svalbard archipelago. But climate change is increasing the risk of avalanches threatening Longyearbyen's near 2,000 inhabitants. More ...

July 2, 2017 - Avalanche report points to lack of teachers’ mountaineering knowledge

The price paid for slighting the risks involved in students from Tochigi Prefecture (Japan) climbing a snow-covered mountain was too great. An investigative committee set up by the prefecture’s board of education has released an interim report on the accident in which eight people died in a snow avalanche that hit high school students and others in the town of Nasu in the prefecture in March. More ...

July 8, 2017 - NASA photographed a huge avalanche from space

A scientist has discovered a rare picture of an avalanche taken by a NASA satellite more than 20 years ago. Such a photo is highly unusual because avalanches only last seconds or minutes, and NASA's satellite fleet covers some 200 million square miles of the planet's surface. What's more, most satellites take only still photographs, which limits their ability to capture brief random events like avalanches. More ...

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