| OCR Text |
Show about snow conditions on that slope. The area may be perfectly safe and it may be harboring a slab. The snow ranger has no right to open it to the public unless he knows. Both of these reasons boil down to time and distance. If the safety organization is large and competent enough to cover the entire area there will be no slopes closed permanently. The touring area is rather a knotty problem. Close supervision beyond the limits of the developed ski area is impossible even in Switzerland where safety organizations are much larger than in this country. The situation is probably as difficult at Alta as it would be anywhere with its high proportion of day visitors and the magnificent slopes on every hand which invite the skier to leave the beaten path. Unfortunately, for both the snow ranger and the ski mountaineer, many of these slopes overlook the heavily used runs, the parking area, and the highway. The touring policy in force at Alta is not offered as a completely satisfactory answer to the problem of what to do about the skier1s characteristic ambition to go a little higher and steeper than anyone else. But it is workable and becomes more effective as American skiers become better educated to alpine snow conditions. The policy has five cardinal principles: 1. Any touring slope from which a man-caused avalanche would endanger the area in use by the general public is in the zone of close supervision. At Alta the snow ranger has ample powers to enforce closures on these slopes. 2. Beyond the territory where the ski mountaineer can, either directly or by example, endanger the general public, he is on his own, 3. During periods of critical avalanche hazard, touring is prohibited or restricted. In practice this is generally during major storms when no one wants to tour anyway. U. The snow ranger is available 2k hours a day to give snow, weather, and trail information. Often he can warn touring parties away from certain exposures or certain areas along their route, or give advance notice of an incoming storm. 5. The standard mountain precaution of registering a touring party1s departure, route, objective, and return is encouraged. Active Protection: Active methods of avalanche protection have already been mentioned. It has been amply proved at Alta and elsewhere that no slope constantly skied from the top will avalanche in depth or develop dangerous hidden instabilities. If this were not true, the development of alpine ski areas would be extremely difficult. Practically every slope in general use at Alta is a former slide path stabilized by skiing. |
