Your Backyard Avalanche Forecaster

A dizzying skin track up a bowl on the backside of Penguin peak. Faintly visible ski turns down chutes that drop off the rarely-visited west ridge of Cantata. A boot pack up a couloir at the back end of the Front Range. You may have seen Matthew Brunton's tracks in the more distant corners of the Chugach in person or more likely on social media. While most Anchorage skiers are making the weekend commute to Hatcher Pass or Turnagain, Brunton is skinning back into Chugach State Park-single-handedly forecasting in an area nearly a half-million acres in size.

Of course, it's impossible for one person-or a dozen-to produce detailed forecasts for such a large and diverse region, but Brunton does as much as any single human could. He travels through the most commonly visited parts of the park-Glen Alps, Arctic Valley and South Fork of Eagle River-on a weekly basis and makes numerous longer excursions many other days of the week.

For both logical reasons and historical coincidence, Chugach State Park has a much thinner avalanche forecasting bench than the Chugach National Forest. In a sense, it is logical: The National Forest is federal land and the federal government's investment in the center suggests an intense focus on safety. In addition, the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center board of directors includes savvy and dedicated fundraisers who substantially augment federal resources with substantial donations. As a result, Turnagain Pass-which is in the Chugach-regularly has a half-dozen people, including professionals, producing daily forecasts for most of the winter (cnfaic.org). By contrast, Hatcher Pass relies primarily on a two-person team of volunteers (hatcherpassavalanchecenter.org) who produce once-per-week forecasts. Chugach State Park-the mountains in our back yard-is forecasted by Brunton.

Incredibly, Brunton appears to cover more ground than the whole team from the Chugach. His method is different; more travel, fewer snow pits. One could argue there are advantages and disadvantages of that technique, but in the very wind-affected Chugach, there is logic behind the approach: There are strong visual indicators of wind deposition in different places, and the only way to record them is to see them. While there are weather stations on Penguin Peak, at Arctic Valley and at Glen Alps, they can't account for the many and varied winds that sweep through Chugach State Park.

According to Brunton-and consistent with my personal experience-wind is the driver of avalanche danger in the Chugach. Deep, light, unconsolidated snow one day may be blown away and deposited as touchy, dangerous wind slabs the next. A radically thinner snowpack than the maritime Turnagain Pass area can have lingering facets (a weak type of snow layer) that are reminiscent of Continental snowpacks in the Lower 48 or the Interior. Wind deposition often varies greatly by location, since winds that sweep down Powerline valley and Rabbit Creek may not affect a couple valleys to the north.

A record of fatalities in Chugach State Park, prominently displayed on the Anchorage Avalanche Center's website (anchorageavalanchecenter.org), highlights the risks of wind. The Glen Alps area, including Flattop, Powerline valley and Peak 3, have seen multiple fatalities. Brunton emphasizes that risk isn't limited to skiers-approximately half the avalanche fatalities in Chugach State Park were hikers, sledders, snowshoers or climbers.

I asked Brunton what some common risky areas are for winter recreationalists who may not be cognizant of avalanche danger, and he named some of the areas where there have been fatalities--gullies on Flattop and the ridge that continues back toward Ptarmigan, and wind-loaded areas along Turnagain Arm--including the huge west-facing bowl of Penguin Peak (which has a popular hiking trail in it) and westward aspects of Bird Ridge where a sledder was caught in an avalanche five years ago. There are also relatively safer areas to recreate in the Front Range, including the Middle Fork loop and (with sufficient snow) the center of Powerline valley--well away from the Wedge and Ptarmigan mountainsides (and off the summer trail that goes by them) that contain avalanche terrain.

This year, Brunton and the Anchorage Avalanche Center are putting on several events, including three avalanche introduction courses. 

     -      12/14/16-Randoism Saves: Ski Alpinism in Chugach State Park ("Trip Report" presentation at TapRoot)

     -      12/30/16-Avalanche Introduction & Refresher Workshop at Eagle River Nature Center

     -      1/8/16-Special Avalanche Introduction & Refresher Workshop at Arctic Valley

"Intro" courses are good for awareness for people who want to avoid avalanche terrain, or who are just venturing into winter backcountry, whereas Avalanche Level 1 courses are more appropriate for backcountry travelers who will encounter avalanche terrain.

Over the last few years, Anchorage's avalanche forecasting scene has become increasingly professional. CNFAIC has added staff. The Alaska Avalanche Information Center has aggregated funding for multiple avalanche centers, increasing available resources for forecasting throughout the state. Anchorage may soon have more forecasting for our backyard; the Alaska Avalanche Information Center is hiring a forecaster for Chugach State Park, meaning that Brunton wouldn't be the lone forecaster for the region.

In the meantime Brunton is forecasting by himself, covering an extraordinary amount of ground in the often wind-hammered front range. Sometimes, I'd argue, he does too good of a job, at least from the perspective of keeping secret spots to himself. Those of us who see good snow in his reports may be tempted to make a shorter drive and check out what were previously seldom-visited Front Range chutes rather than slogging out to Turnagain or Hatcher.