Sneak Peek of the Week
A lucky season for backcountry travelers. So far.
2
Avalanche fatalities in Colorado so far in the 2023-24 season
The past few weeks have been exceptionally busy for the avalanche forecasters and researchers at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. The center has filed reports of about 30 people caught in 27 slides in the past few weeks, with none of the caught skiers injured or killed. (A CAIC forecaster was caught and partially buried on April 8 but escaped without major injuries.) This winter the CAIC has recorded more than 5,000 avalanches so far, with 102 people caught, 37 people partially buried, six people fully buried, and 14 people injured in avalanches.
All those numbers are typical for April except this one: Only two people have been killed in avalanches this winter.
In the past 20 years, there has only been one season — 2016-17 when snowfall across the state was below average — when so few backcountry travelers were killed in avalanches by early April. But the season is hardly over so go ahead … we’ll wait while you knock on wood.
That fatality count can change in a blink, warns CAIC deputy director Brian Lazar.
“Just like any year, some people got lucky this winter,” Lazar says, pointing to several avalanches with successful rescues of fully buried skiers by their partners. “Other years, companion rescues can be just as efficient without the same outcome.”
There were more than a few instances that simply “broke in a good way this season,” Lazar says, warning that one or two avalanches this spring can break the other way “and our fatality numbers could look a lot worse.”
Another mark for the lucky side so far this season: The number of backcountry skiers caught in slides in the past few weeks — at least 30 — involved pretty small avalanches that typically do not kill.
As of the second week in April, every river basin in Colorado has above-average snowpack, with the state sitting at 108% of normal for this time. Right about now, snowpacks across the state typically peak and begin to fade.
’Tis the season for backcountry skiers to begin pushing into steeper terrain as snowpacks stabilize and avalanche dangers ebb. Mother Nature is cooperating this spring and snowpacks are less threatening, Lazar said. Which is yet another mark in the lucky column as the 2024-25 winter moves toward one of the least deadly in Colorado since 2016-17.
“This week is kind of exactly how you want to transition into spring,” he said. “The daytime highs are not too hot with really good nighttime freezes. You want to coax this transition, not just flip a switch.”
Welcome to The Outsider, the outdoors and mountain newsletter from The Colorado Sun. Keep reading for more exclusive news on the industry from the inside out.
If you’re reading this newsletter but not signed up for it, here’s how to get it sent directly to your inbox.
Send feedback and tips to jason@coloradosun.com.
In Their Words
Mountain-town fashionistas offering “inspiration to branch out.”
$15.7 billion
Apparel sales by outdoor retailers in 2023, accounting for 57% of all outdoor retail sales, marking a 3% decline from 2022
Pro skier Hadley Hammer a few years ago was flipping through old photos documenting her life on skis. The oldest shots had the renowned mountaineer sporting hand-me-down duds from her brothers. Then came years with a narrow style that fits the modern-day adventure athlete.
“There have been so many times in my ski career where I’ve been mistaken for a guy,” Hammer told Sun reporter Parker Yamasaki, referring to the ski industry’s slow embrace of female athletes. “I want to be able to express myself as a woman, as myself, as someone who can jump off a 60-foot cliff but also has a subscription to Vogue.”
Hammer and Telluride-based professional skier Kellyn Wilson are champions of women’s mountain style, working to break women free from the mountain-town uniform that sadly lacks vibrancy and independence. (Homogenous Colorado mountain-town garb has not changed much in decades, with an over-dependence on Mellys, flat-brims and Blundstones.)
The duo’s Togs Substack newsletter offers advice and musings that work to elevate fashion — as well as function — in mountain environments.
“We’re not trying to make people wear crazier things or change what makes them happy,” Wilson told Parker. “It’s more for the people who have these interests already, that want to express themselves through style and fashion. A lot of (skiers) live in small towns or homogeneous environments in one way or another. So (Togs) is just permission, or inspiration, to branch out.”
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read Parker’s story
The Playground
Colorado’s first road-jump fatality
A 21-year-old Colorado skier from Black Hawk came up short on a jump over U.S. 40 on Berthoud Pass on Tuesday and slammed the guard rail. Dallas Lebeau’s friends, who were filming him, were unable to revive him and he died.
It is likely the first road-gap fatality in Colorado history. (Stay tuned for a CORA request exploring Colorado State Patrol records to confirm that.)
Skiers and snowboarders build road gap jumps all over Colorado and in California, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Wyoming and British Columbia. The testing pieces for brave young athletes — they all seem to be young men — can be found just about anywhere pavement slices through steep, snowy slopes. There are thousands of online clips showing skiers and snowboarders floating over pavement.
Ski moviemakers have been filming road gap segments for decades, and professionals love to post clips of themselves gracefully soaring over roads.
Professional skier Josh Daiek turbo-charged his career in 2019 when he launched what is considered the biggest road gap jump ever: a massive back-flip over Highway 50 outside South Lake Tahoe while cameras rolled.
Loveland Pass in Colorado has a few popular spots where skiers and snowboarders frequently film themselves flipping and spinning over U.S. 6. There’s a spot in the Vail Pass Winter Recreation Area where skiers huck themselves over the snowy Lime Creek Road. Athletes also film themselves launching road gaps on Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray. Some daredevils even leap over moving trains. Many mountain bikers video themselves flying over roadways as well.
The Grand County Sheriff’s Office could not recall any incidents involving skiers trying to jump U.S. 40 on Berthoud Pass. There are questions around the legality of building a kicker in the snow and leaping over a busy roadway. There are no specific laws that prevent road gap jumps.
Pro skier Jake Hopfinger has built road gaps all over the West, often capturing video of his lofty leaps. The videos rarely show the complicated planning and testing as he sculpts takeoffs, stomps snow on the approach and gauges the speed and trajectory needed to clear the pavement and guardrails below.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” said the 23-year old from Bozeman, Montana. “All the road gaps are pretty much named and established jumps. People know them but you still need to be calculating and careful. It’s a lot different than your standard backcountry booter where you can go small and still land in pow.”
Hopfinger built a gap jump wrong a couple years ago in Utah and he hit it too fast and it ended up launching him too far. Road gaps are intimidating, and he prefers jumps that cross a snowy snowmobile path, not pavement and zooming cars.
“Like anything it has a lot of consequences but you can totally do it right,” Hopfinger said. “We obviously risk a lot doing anything in skiing or snowboarding or mountain biking, but there is a right way to do it. It’s all about risk management.”
The Guide
Colorado legislation imposes strict new rules on railroads as the derailed-but-not-dead Uinta Basin Railway plan returns
The Colorado House this week approved legislation that would limit the length of trains as a way to reduce chances of a hazardous spill in watersheds. The proposal is in response to increased derailments involving hazardous materials and the Uinta Basin Railway plan, which, while derailed, is not dead.
House Bill 1030 has collected support from conservation groups eager to prevent projects like the Uinta Basin Railway, which proposed routing as much as 5 billion gallons of crude on trains two miles long through Colorado along the Colorado River.
The Uinta Basin Railway project faces fierce opposition and was derailed last year when the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with environmental groups and overturned the railway project’s approval by the Surface Transportation Board. But the proposal is not dead.
The group behind that Uinta Basin Railway — the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, which hopes to ramp up production of the basin’s crude with a railroad that connects the oil fields to the national rail network — last month asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appellate court’s decision. The railway’s backers also are hoping to overturn the appeals court decision with legislation crafted by Utah’s federal lawmakers. Both Utah’s U.S. Rep. John Curtis and Sen. Mike Lee have crafted amendments to federal spending bills — Curtis for a transportation appropriations bill and Lee for a military construction spending bill — that would give congressional approval to the Uinta Basin Railway project as “required in the national interest.”
Uinta Basin crude is still delivered on trains through Colorado and the Utah oil industry is seeking federal approval to expand railroad loading facilities in Carbon County that could export much more of the basin’s crude — delivered by trucks from the oil fields to the loadout depots — through Colorado.
The Colorado railroad legislation requires railroads to better train workers and community firefighters to handle hazardous spills. It also requires railroad companies to install wayside detectors on every 10-to-15 miles of track that monitor passing trains and can swiftly identify defects that could cause an accident. Railroad companies also must maintain insurance policies to cover the cost of spills and accidents.
“Colorado’s fragile ecosystems, weather extremes, extensive number of hard-to-maintain railroad track miles and number of communities through which railroads operate necessitate that the state take decisive action to prevent and mitigate potential harm to the environment and Colorado residents from derailments and other accidents,” the legislation reads.
The legislation also limits the length of trains in Colorado to 8,500 feet. The $2.5 billion Uinta Basin Railway plan could send as many as 10 trains a day — each longer than 10,000 feet with more than 100 heated tanker cars — through Colorado. The legislation also creates a Colorado fine structure for railroads that violate the new rules and allows railroad union representatives a way to investigate safety issues.
Colorado lawmakers in 2019 approved legislation that required at least two crew members on all freight trains in the state. The Biden administration this month announced a new rule that required two crew members aboard all freight trains. Ohio passed a two-person-crew law and rules requiring railside defect detectors in 2023 following the fiery derailment in East Palestine and the railroad industry sued the state to overturn the law.
Similar proposals have been floated at the federal level — including defect detectors on the side of tracks — but no law has been passed by Congress.
Railroads are the safest way to move goods across land and the railroad industry works “every day to further reduce incidents,” said Ted Greener with the Association of American Railroads.
“We support data-driven policies that can bolster safety, however, we oppose arbitrary measures such as train length limitations or one-size-fits-all detector spacing provisions,” Greener said in an email. “Undue intervention could yield unintended consequences, such as moving freight off private railroads to public highways and in turn increasing emissions and road damage.”
A spokesman for Union Pacific said the railroad operator, which runs on more than 1,500 miles of track in Colorado, said “safety is always our first priority” and the company is working with the Association of American Railroads to review the legislation.
The Colorado Senate Transportation and Energy Committee is scheduled to hear testimony on House Bill 24-1030 on April 17.
>> Stay tuned to The Sun as the legislation winds through the statehouse
The inbox overflows with angst as readers detail the dangers, medical costs of ski injuries and collisions
I think we hit a nerve. The pair of stories on ski injuries published in The Sun this week resonated with readers. I’ve spent the week corresponding with dozens of readers who wanted to share their stories from Colorado’s slopes. The litany of complaints reveals four major frustrations among skiers and snowboarders.
First, there is a growing number of resort visitors who are hit by skiers and snowboarders who do not stick around, which is required under Colorado law. How can resorts better enforce that law?
Second, there is a little-more-than simmering disdain for the season-pass business model that packs unlimited numbers of skiers on slopes.
Third, many readers wonder how the legalization of weed and the intractable connection between skiing and boozing are impacting on-slope behaviors.
And fourth — and this one is universal in every email and phone call — people who are forced into emergency care in mountain towns are spending months and even years dealing with medical bills and insurance hassles. The hospitals in Colorado ski towns are generating huge revenues off thousands of injured skiers and snowboarders every winter, most of them requiring costly care that is outside their insured network.
The skier who was blasted from behind at Breckenridge and spent the night in a Summit County hospital was left with a bill for $56,000 because his insurance company has some sort of dispute with the hospital owner. Almost everyone reports paying $1,500 to $2,000 for an ambulance ride from the ski area to a regional hospital and many times that if they are transported down to metro Denver. A woman who was hit from behind at Vail and spent two weeks in hospitals a year ago has almost 200 health insurance claims still pending for medical costs that are close to $500,000. (That skier took off, too.) A Winter Park skier suffered a broken collarbone in a hit-and-run that left him unable to ski for the rest of the season. A bunch of Beaver Creek residents have packed up and moved after too many injuries from collisions.
Skiing is dangerous. That’s part of the thrill. Everyone who loads a chair knows they are taking some risk and accepting responsibility for the inherent dangers in flying down snow on skis. And while there are hundreds of skiers who suffer injuries every season, it is impossible to know specifics. The resort industry checks in on injury trends only once a decade, and the latest update from the 2020-21 season is still pending.
Stories and statistics about collisions are not the kind of coverage the ski resort industry wants to see. But for an industry that has never been more flush with cash as it grapples with record-setting growth and searches for strategies to get more people onto snow and keep more folks in the sport, doesn’t it seem like improved transparency and hard conversations around collisions and injuries would be a step toward sustained health?
When educating skiers about their own responsibilities and the inherent risks of skiing, wouldn’t a clear look at the rate of injuries and collisions help? Those numbers are out there. Most pass-scanning resort operators know all the details of your skiing life.
“There used to be some ‘romance’ related to skiing,” writes a former ski instructor in Eagle County. “Now this is gone, and it reflects the ills of our society. There is no personal accountability or responsibility.”
— j
Corrections & Clarifications
Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.