But on a mountaintop in the backcountry of the Lolo National Forest, two avalanche specialists took just a few moments to reach the same conclusion Thursday.
They dug a pit in the snowpack and exposed the layers, a seemingly solid white block that collapsed at the slightest touch.
“Scary,” Steve Karkanen said. “It's screaming instability.”
“It's about as weak as you can get,” Dudley Improta agreed.
Recent heavy snows have created dangerous avalanche conditions in the backcountry of western Montana, where skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers venture in search of solitude and thrills.
A snowmobiler suffered a broken leg Wednesday when he triggered an avalanche near Whitefish Mountain ski area, and an avalanche warning was issued Friday for the mountains of west-central Montana, including the Bitterroots and Rattlesnakes.
On Thursday morning, Karkanen and Improta were assessing the backcountry snowpack near the Snowbowl ski area north of Missoula.
The two men are part of the Missoula-based Western Central Montana Avalanche Center, one of three grassroots groups in Montana that evaluate avalanche conditions and post advisories on their Web sites.
The Missoula center puts out advisories once a week. The Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center based in Bozeman issues daily advisories. The Glacier Country Avalanche Center based in Whitefish releases advisories once or twice a week.
The three Montana centers are among 16 such efforts nationwide.
Worldwide, the number of avalanche fatalities has risen steadily since the 1950s. In the past decade, 40 percent of U.S. avalanche fatalities have been snowmobilers, whose increasingly powerful machines take them deeper and higher into the mountains.
Last winter, 24 people were killed in avalanches in the United States, including four in Montana. In west-central Montana, there were no high avalanche danger warnings or avalanche injuries.
So far this year, three people have died in avalanches in the United States - none in Montana.
Montana has the third highest number of avalanche fatalities in the nation - and the highest per capita - in a state where backcountry recreation has grown dramatically in recent years.
But the state has no dedicated funding or full-time employees for assessing avalanche conditions on public lands.
So the job falls to volunteers from the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies, organizations and companies that provide some funding and allow employees to work on avalanche advisories.
Much of the land is managed by the Forest Service - some ski resorts operate on leased federal land - but budget cutbacks mean the agency doesn't have funds to pay for round-the-clock avalanche assessments in the backcountry beyond ski resorts.
“It's so important for the public to get more involved,” especially snowmobilers, skiers, snowboarders and snowshoers, said Karkanen, a former ski patrolman who is the Lolo National Forest's Hotshot firefighting crew superintendent.
The Western Central Montana Avalanche Center, which formed in 1986, would like to issue advisories twice a week, said Karkanen, the center's director.
“But the money is just hard to come by,” said Improta, assistant director of campus recreation at the University of Montana.
Avalanche assessments are based on a variety of factors, such as precipitation, wind, temperature, the freeze-thaw cycle, recent avalanche activity and field data about the snowpack's fragility and strength.
It's a complex task, using a combination of science and intuition, of hand tools and technology, of load factors and crystal bonding, to predict whether and when a mountainside may shrug off its snowpack.
When avalanche volunteers reach mountaintops, they go beyond ski resort boundaries. Mile after mile, alone in the forest, the volunteers look and listen and probe as they glide through the frigid high country.
It's a bucolic setting that resembles a Christmas card or a snow globe - evergreen boughs draped in white, flakes falling gently, a virgin blanket on the land - but it can be deceiving. Stable and unstable snow can seem the same.
Avalanches take four basic ingredients: a slope from 30 degrees to 50 degrees, an underlying weak layer of snow, a heavy slab of snow on top, and a trigger.
Some avalanches occur naturally, but many are caused by people. Slab avalanches, which account for most fatalities, occur when wind-blown snow collects on a weak base on the leeward side of a slope.
As they move through the backcountry, the volunteers listen for cracking, which means snow layers are fracturing, and for “whoomfing,” the sound of snow layers collapsing.
They dig snow pits in likely avalanche areas, using their hands, tools and judgment to estimate whether a mountainside will give way. Observations from backcountry skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers also are taken into account.
Ski resorts, which originated avalanche testing in the 1950s, assess conditions on their own slopes and use explosives and other methods to protect their customers.
At Snowbowl on Thursday, Karkanen and Improta rode the ski lift to the top, where snow squalls blanketed the forest.
They skied past the boundary markers to a slope where they sometimes conduct tests. About 20 feet below the top, they took off their skis and packs, took out their shovels and dug a pit, exposing a cross-section of the snowpack.
They used their fingers and probes, brushes, saws, thermometers and other tools to evaluate the crystals' grain type, grain size, density and other factors. They tapped down on blocks of snow to see how much weight would cause them to collapse.
The stability of the snowpack varies widely from location to location, from day to day, from snowfall to snowfall, so avalanche warnings aren't meant to provide a blanket reassurance or condemnation.
Rather, avalanche centers try to give people enough basic safety information through advisories, classes and workshops that they can make their own decisions in the backcountry.
“The bottom line is people have to take responsibility for themselves and use common sense,” Karkanen said.
More information is available from www.avalanche.org, www.missoulaavalanche.org, www.glacieravalanche.org and www.mtavalanche.com.
Reporter John Cramer can be reached at 523-5259 or at johncramer@missoulian.com
On Missoulian.com
For reports and photos from ski areas throughout western Montana, go to the Missoulian's snow sports blog, http://www.montanasnowsports.com
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