Road signs are pictured on a snow-covered road in Saint-Pancrace, France. The sign on the bottom reads, “Avalanche risk”. – Reuters photo
WITH the 2018 Winter Olympics now behind us, I raise my glass to salute the united Korean team. Sport should always be above political differences in opinions. The upper slopes of the Taebaek Mountains and hillsides in Pyeong Chang glistened white in the snow as I watched most outdoor events on my Korean-made television. As a geomorphologist, I did ask myself a pertinent question “Are the ski slopes there susceptible to snow avalanches where the mountains are 1,000 metres in height?”
Recent avalanche history
Over the last 70 years, what we now call meteorological ‘snow bombs’ have caused many avalanche disasters in European Alpine regions. My earliest memories of such date back to the ‘Winter of Terror’ of 1950 to 1951 when listening to the radio. Avalanche after avalanche thundered down alpine mountainsides, causing 250 deaths in only three months. A total of 135 of these fatalities were in the Austrian Tyrol; further massive avalanches hit the same area again in 1954.
The deadliest avalanche, in the French Alps, occurred in February 1970, when 37 young skiers were swept away, together with their hotel, early one morning. In February 1999, avalanches claimed 62 villagers’ lives in Austria, France and Switzerland.
Just a year ago, an earthquake in central Italy shook accumulated snow and ice off a mountain, killing 29 people. We still do not know the total death toll, caused by multiple avalanches, in remote Nepalese mountain villages, triggered by that dreadful earthquake in April 2015.
What is an avalanche?
Many years ago, I climbed deep snow-covered mountains in the UK but was always extremely cautious when walking along a narrow ridge not to disturb a cornice. The latter is an accumulation of snow that has frozen on the leeside of a ridge and hangs tongue-like over the mountainside below. Had I cracked open a cornice, it could have started an avalanche, enveloping fellow climbers well below me.
Mountain slopes of at least 25 degrees in angle are the likely ones to experience avalanches. Accumulated snow, experiencing thawing by day and freezing at night, and exacerbated by a sudden downfall of fresh snow, create stress within the accumulated snow upon the slope’s angle of rest. The slope gets to a point when it can no longer support the accumulated snow and ice layers, which just crash out, so that the slope fails.
In most avalanche disasters, a sudden thaw can create an avalanche, when meltwater provides a lubricant for the snow-slope movement and gravity then plays its part, the ‘white cloud’ tumbling downhill until the angle of rest is adjusted.
Noise from overhead aircraft, skiers, rumbles of thunder and earthquakes can lead to a snow-covered slope unloading its overlying burden but much depends on the time of day and ambient temperatures. A resounding ‘crack’ is heard as the snow is dislodged from just below the mountain summit and the avalanche gains both volume and momentum as it sweeps all before it in its path downslope before it finally comes to rest.
Weather patterns dictate all
Records of the amounts of snow at ski resorts worldwide date back from the 1960s, as cheaper air fares became available for package ski holidays. All travel agents today, either in shop or online, like to predict in advance the likelihood of good snow conditions for a client’s potential booking but often quoting yesteryear figures.
The winter months from 2014 to 2016 saw mild weather in most of Alpine Europe with little snowfall. This winter, however, has seen huge dumps of snow in these areas as the Jet Stream has meandered over much of Europe and the North America, bringing in cyclonic, moisture laden warm air masses over cold land masses. The tourist trade in both continents is jumping for joy! Such huge dumps of snow will see more such extreme weather events as climate change begins to bite.
Skiers are seen at the resort of Chalmazel, France. – AFP photo
European researchers maintain that the central Swiss glaciers will have disappeared in 70 years’ time. In the Himalayas, fast-melting glaciers are constantly revealing the bodies of former climbers, which were lost a few decades ago. The European Alps will lose 30 per cent of snow by 2100. It is very likely that, in some years, we will experience huge dumps of snow in ski resort areas while in other years a massive snow deficit will occur. Nowadays, this latter problem can be overcome through the use of advanced ‘snow-cannon’ machines. These may well reduce avalanche hazards in skiing venues worldwide, literally as a last resort.
Downhill skiing
Cross-country skiing has been an age old method of transport in Scandinavian countries for centuries, hence its name Nordic skiing or ‘lagerlauf’. It was, however, a local Quaker family, the Fox brothers of Wellington, Somerset, UK, famous for its manufacture of quality woollen cloth, who took their Nordic wooden skis to the Swiss Alps in the early 20th century. These brothers shortened the cross country ski to create greater mobility in skiing downslope in Alpine environments. These original, shortened wooden skis are, today, proudly exhibited in a hotel in Interlaken, Switzerland, at the very place where the Fox brothers always used to stay.
Having manufactured the woollen, green puttees to protect British soldiers’ legs from wind and rain in those dreadful trenches of World War 1 (1914-1918), the Fox brothers went on, in post war years, to produce colourful puttees for the, then, ‘new age’ skiers. Sadly, in that war, thousands of troops lost their lives in the Austro-Italian Alps as artillery shells rained down avalanches on their positions. Their graveyards, in remote areas, are too numerous to mention.
Controlling avalanches
Today, early morning ‘booms’ can be heard across alpine valley resorts as explosive charges are dropped from low-flying helicopters onto unstable, snow-bearing slopes. These controlled explosions much reduce the chance of a major avalanche for a series of smaller avalanches are thus triggered.
Risk management techniques are employed, involving the mapping of potential avalanche paths together with controlling human activities. Safe skiing pistes are marked out on mountainsides, but foolish skiers still venture ‘off piste’. On days of high risk, ski slopes are closed and skiers are redirected to safer slopes in nearby valleys. Ski resorts issue daily bulletins for their clientele on all avalanche risks.
On the upper valley slopes, steel and wooden fences are pile-driven into the underlying bedrock to act as avalanche traps, with deflection structures built around electricity pylons and chair-lift structures and villages. Avalanche sheds (not unlike the metal structures, above the windows and porches, we see in Malaysia, to cope with driving rain), are built over main roads and tunnels driven through hillsides to keep roads avalanche-free. Reafforestation of slopes, in the summer months has been tried but, alas, these methods take years for the trees to mature and a massive avalanche will turn trees into matchsticks on its downslope path.
Whilst snow-covered mountain landscapes are serenely beautiful to view, they carry hidden risks. I have trekked over avalanche prone slopes to heights of 3,000 metres only in summer time, in the Transylvanian Alps in Romania, the Austrian-Italian Tyrol and in the Slovenian Alps and descended into the valley floors along former avalanche trails. I have sometimes wondered whether I have missed out in life in not having the time or the money to learn to ski. I marvel at the bravery of local mountain rescue teams who, during the climbing and skiing seasons, daily put their own lives at risk in saving the lives of others often buried in snow. I trust that this article will not deter those Malaysian winter skiers who trust their luck on the ski slopes of Europe, at Sapporo on Hokkaido, Japan, or in the Australian Alps. Korea must be your next destination. Please stick to the marked pistes and heed all avalanche warnings, but most of all admire the beauty of the mountain scenery.