As extra snow hits the U.S. and skiers and snowboarders anticipate the rope dropping on their favourite terrain, it isn’t all the time so simple as ready on sufficient snowfall.
That’s what the ski patrollers at Keystone Resort, Colorado, know, which is why they spend time boot-compacting (or boot packing) its avalanche terrain. The resort shared on its social media pages some footage and movies of the work it takes to open the terrain above the treeline with the next caption:
Opening Keystone’s excessive alpine terrain takes much more work than simply merely ready on Mom Nature to ship the products. With the early season snowfall, Keystone Ski Patrollers will boot compact Keystone’s avalanche terrain in efforts to create a extra cohesive snowpack for the rest of the ski season. Boot packing varieties columns within the snow, breaking apart potential weak layers and permitting new snow to fill in these holes creating “columns” of stability. That is one in every of many techniques our patrollers will use to maintain early season snowfall in place and permit future snowstorms to arrange on prime of this layer for some nice season lengthy snowboarding. Whereas we’re nonetheless a number of extra weeks away from snowboarding above treeline, exhausting work like this will get us nearer and nearer!
Does Boot Compacting Work?
Boot-packing is a way that’s extensively utilized in an try to disrupt depth hoar, weak layers, and protracted weak layers to extend variability throughout a slope, thereby growing total slope stability. In principle it is smart.
A research on the effectiveness of boot packing for snowpack stabilization was carried out in 2012 at Large Sky, Montana. A 50 meter by 25 meter, comparatively uniform slope, was break up into two equal areas with one being extensively boot packed, whereas the opposite remained undisturbed. Observations have been made in each boot-packed and non-boot-packed plots till each areas have been unreactive with respect to outcomes utilizing Prolonged Column Assessments (ECT).
Outcomes confirmed that density and hand hardness elevated within the boot-packed space compared to the non-boot-packed space. As well as, within the boot-packed space there was a measurable improve in ECT scores and a change in fracture character of the basal layers. Within the non-boot-packed space, the ECTs propagated (ECTPs) for a full 9 weeks longer than within the boot-packed space. This research’s knowledge signifies that boot-packing could be an efficient instrument for serving to to stabilize persistent weak layers, so we are able to have a protracted, secure season.
Because the ski season unfolds, taking proactive steps like boot packing could make a significant distinction in mitigating avalanche hazard. By stabilizing weak layers and breaking apart potential slabs, this easy but efficient method contributes to safer situations for everybody on the slopes.
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