avalache awareness- for snowshoers

Thats a good point about warning labels being ignored but I like the suggestion about the avy awareness booklet being handed out , or on display with winter purchases.
REI does do a lot already and my wife works there but I'm just brainstorming on how to get the occasional recreational snow shoer or whomever to correlate terrain and weather into an awareness about avalanche danger.

I'm going to get off my soap box now but I was really affected today while skiing thinking about those snowboarders maybe being less than a mile away!( Hope not, but that coould be the reality)

As a recovering backcountry snowshoer, I might have a little light (case study?) to shed on the situation. By way of backstory, I had previous experience as a competent whitewater boater, outdoor educator, and peak scrambler. Risk assessment and management was and is important to me. I've read ANAM , as well as whitewater accident reports, religiously for years.

In late March of '06, I got a pair of snowshoes and headed into Commonwealth Basin. As a researcher by nature and employ, I believe that by early April, I'd discovered the NWAC forecasts for both avalanche danger and weather . I did some avalanche-intrigued web surfing, checking out avalanche.org and others . As spring conditions were near, I didn't get much time to learn from the NWAC discussions.

Sometime in November '06, I discovered TAY (thanks to a reference in an NWAC avy forecast), and found that the conditions reports were more useful than anything I'd seen. (I saw photos of the Slot getting skied, and the AT hook was all but set.) I read TAY daily, and followed the NWAC output religiously. By mid-December, I'd read much of what the web had to offer. I found a tree well around that time, broadening my awareness of hazards considerably. Beacon, shovel, and probe were acquired in early January '07. I spent much of my subsequent trips digging pits, making snowshoe-appropriate Rutschblocks, jumping on test slopes, and talking incessantly about snow stability with companions.

Notably, late January saw me intentionally heading into the interface of moderate/considerable danger, just to see what considerable actually meant - the resulting woomph sent me home with my tail between my legs. Gary Brill gave a presentation (thanks Gary!) at UW in early/mid January which I attended, and an equivalent one a few hours later at REI. I was aware of them from multiple sources, including REI's own literature that I encountered on trips there to acquire gear. He's doing some again this year, one for free , and two courses for $ . REI's not totally complacent about snowshoe education . You'll have to ask Gary how well attended they are, and by whom. I started contributing conditions reports to avalanchenw.org and to TAY sometime in January.
It will please the reader to note that, after discovering TAY, I knew to keep my snowshoes out of skin tracks, and did so as much as I thought I could.

I continued my backcountry education on snowshoes until early April, when I clicked into my Dynafits for the first time. I've not been back since.

I learned eerily about loose wet slides on my first trip on skis with a few Avy I trained folks who should've known better (I should've too. The signs were obvious and everywhere.). I spent the summer gorging on corn. Summer and fall have seen me reading and re-reading Bruce Tremper's text (and others), and I've been out digging in the snow since it's begun falling for the season. I can't wait to get out and see Ron j's reported depth hoar , as I'm astounded to learn that the snowpack isn't really consolidated after all that rain. I continue to try to safely explore and learn in the backcountry, always leaving myself a back door or two to escape from whereever I am. It's great out there.

I also found the NW Snow and Avalanche Summit intensely useful.

I may or may not have been the typical snowshoer, but I think that I was representative of at least part of the snowshoeing population. Snowshoe-relevant education, like this left a distinct impression on me in the early stages of my edification. Snowshoe focused material (stories of snowshoer burials, images of snowshoe tracks walking down a hill and disappearing at a crown line, and depictions of the impacts of smaller slides and terrain traps) may help make awareness more relevant to snowshoers.
I was very much aware of "avalanche awareness seminars" offered by REI and the like. I was also aware of Avy I courses that were available to me, though I strongly feel that time spent book-learning, pit digging, snow stomping, seminar attending, TAY reading, and backcountry travelling has provided me with roughly equivalent savvy. That approach will not work for everyone, but I think it's worked for me. I'm painfully aware that at age 25 with burgeoning avalanche skill that I'm in the bulls-eye of avalanche death demographics.

For me, the key educational bit was probably learning of the existence of NWAC reports. Once I'd done that, the education was self motivated. Posting permanent signs with the NWAC phone number and web URL at common snowshoeing trailheads (Snow Lake, Commonwealth Creek, Gold Creek, Skyline, Pratt Lake/Granite Mountain, Asahel Curtis, etc.) might go a long way toward making for a more avalanche-savvy snowshoeing populace.

Perhaps Alpental patrol might be willing to move a pointer daily on an avalanche-speedometer at the Snow Lake TH? (and post when they're apt to do control on Mount Snoqualmie?) I'd consider spending a few hours in the shop to make one if they would. It might save them man-days of rescue operations.

It should also be noted that the party avalanched on the Snow Lake Divide did have some avalanche knowledge - they apparently knew the slope that they were on was loaded and were taking limited steps to mitigate the risk when the slope failed. One can only hope that we can help the survivor grieve and then work to teach ourselves and others to avoid the same fate.

In both these cases (and the Melakwa lake incident) the parties involved were out in changing conditions where more current forecast info could have help their decision making process. So brainstorming about ways to get NWAC's valuable products to the masses quickly and in more visible places is good.

The avi speedometer is a great idea. If it were big and stuck right there at the Snow Lake TH people driving to the upper lots would see it too. Of course, it means somebody has to keep it current, and I don't think you'll get Alpental patrol to do that. Maybe if it had a white board with the date on it that would be enough.

People here that regularly use the area (especially dawn patrollers) could just make a habit out of printing the latest NWAC bulletin and posting it on the TH sign. This combined with a dated avalanche rose would help. These have been posted in the Alpental lodge, but it would be nice if they were in more visible/appropriate place (like the snow lake TH, the Alpental BC egress route TH in lot 4, and maybe even the chair 1 bulletin board).

Another idea for NWAC (guess we should get Mark in on this conversation):
An avi bulletin automatic text message service (maybe with an associated avi rose picture?). This would be fairly easy to set up as an email listserv, since all cellphones have their own email address that accepts SMS messages. Cramming the forecast into a 160 character message would be the tricky part.

There isn't a requirement for folks who take the WAC climbing class to take the WAC backcountry travel class (our avy class) beforehand

Pete--Thanks for the correction on the WAC classes.

The Friends of NWAC ( www.avalanchenw.org ) tried to get REI to put avalanche awareness tags on the snowshoes they sell a couple of years ago. Among other things, we learned that all tags (including the REI price tag) are put on the shoes at the manufacturer in China, and planning would need to happen a year before they reach the shelves! It was educational. After an initial meeting we followed up and got no response from REI. I think they are interested and willing, but frankly, the project got put on the backburner because we were forced to focus on other issues - ie - NWAC's funding. Alot of the trailhead ideas mentioned above are great. If anyone out there is interested in helping out with projects like this, please contact the Friends. As an all volunteer organization, we are strung out, and the folks at NWAC are equally busy getting the foreasts out and trying to find $$. These are important issues for sure. As several posts have suggested, the NWAC forecast is only helpful if you check it...educating new backcountry users about this important resource is a big part of avoiding any more avalanche fatalities.

continual educating of backcountry users is most important and trying to relay that to the continuously increasing numbers of users IS hard.  it would be nice to see something more done to inform the users of the alpental valley.

it would be wonderful to see the forest service do more to start this, but  unfortunatly  we may not see the effort started through them.  but,  the forest service information station at the pass located in front of summit west leads snoshoe tours throughout the winter and gives out avalanche safety information for free.  i don't know who leads the tours and can not say if it is someone qualified to relay the avalanche safety information that is needed.  in the past i believe this area, i-90 corridor, did have a winter ranger program through the forest service ranger station in north bend.  i think there is or was something similar along hwy 410.  maybe someone who has been in the area longer would know more. 

currently the forest service's budget is roughly 45% directed at wildland fire suppression and use.  the reasoning for not having an active winter front/backcountry ranger program is mostly due to lack of funding.  contacting our local representitives of the forest service, our senators, congressmen, etc. and voicing a concern is a place to possibly start.   i am only speculating on the positions with the forest service and their budgeting.

what about the volunteer based backcountry patroller program that i have heard about in this area?  wouldn't they be useful in this informing of their areas?  anyone a member? have you discussed problems like this in well known problem areas?

as backcountry skiers, boarders that are experienced it is up to us to inform these other nonaware users when we see them.  we should be an open community of people willing and hopeful to educate others for our own safety as well.