Item: Two Decades of a Winter Backcountry Permit System - is This the 'Right' Tool to Encourage Avalanche Awareness, Education, and Responsibility?
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Title: Two Decades of a Winter Backcountry Permit System - is This the 'Right' Tool to Encourage Avalanche Awareness, Education, and Responsibility?
Proceedings: International Snow Science Workshop 2016 Proceedings, Breckenridge, CO, USA
Authors:
- Patrick M. McGervey [ USDA Forest Service, Coconino National Forest, Flagstaff Ranger District, Flagstaff, AZ, USA ]
Date: 2016-10-02
Abstract: In Arizona, the Kachina Peaks rise to an elevation of over 3,800 meters providing a stark contrast to a relatively flat and arid landscape below. Slope angles and storm tracks provide great opportunity for avalanche activity. The Arizona Snowbowl Resort (ASR) carves a slice of pizza out of this terrain, providing lift served access to the Kachina Peaks and offering access to visitors, largely from a desert population center who are often unprepared and poorly informed of hazards. This terrain remains far outside of any Avalanche Center supported backcountry area. The terrain, accessibility, and user assemblage provide a recipe for disaster; this tragedy came together for a young man who was killed by a large slab avalanche in 1995, who was recorded as the first and only avalanche fatality in Arizona. After this tragic event, local land managers, search and rescue leaders, and ski area management convened together and struggled with ways to increase awareness of these hazards and reduce future accidents. The solution soon became a new winter backcountry permit system and by 1998 winter recreationalists were required to obtain a free, season long permit from the Forest Service to leave ASR. The purpose of the permit system is to engage a face-to-face interaction to promote education and awareness of hazards and responsibility necessary for backcountry travel, not to restrict access to public land. Nearly two decades later, the winter backcountry permit remains an anomaly across public land in the west. This paper and poster provides the rational, history, and operation of the permit system and endeavors to explore if the permit system is still an effective tool for education in this unique latitude.
Object ID: ISSW16_P3.40.pdf
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s):
Keywords: Permit System, Education, Public Safety
Page Number(s): 1103-1106
Subjects: public safety avalanche education safe backcountry skiing
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