LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 49 It was early January 2022, and darkness was quickly approaching as I gathered my things after an AIARE Avalanche Rescue Course, one of two such courses offered locally in the Adirondacks by The Mountaineer, the town of Keene Valley's beloved outdoor and mountaineering specialty store. As I loaded up my car, my instructor came over and told me he was coming back to the Adiron- dacks to teach an AIARE Avalanche 1 course in March. He then asked me if there was an avalanche forecast for the Adirondacks, or a website with consistent snowpack observations. I didn't have any sort of resource to give him. I explained it was just part of the Adirondack backcountry skiing experience, an answer I had given many times before. We chatted about this for a while. One of the first things you learn in a Level 1 class is to check the forecast before you go back- country skiing. Most places in the country that have avalanche terrain and a large enough back- country skiing community also have an avalanche forecasting center. But there's only one fore- casting center on the east coast, and that's for the Mount Washington area in New Hampshire. No such forecasting center exists in the Adirondacks, all 6.1 million acres of it. But, I was tired of giving this answer. I wanted there to be a resource that provided information to keep people safer in our mountains. I drove home with ideas brewing in my head. How hard could it be, I thought? Something was better than nothing. I knew exactly the person I wanted to brainstorm with. Meeting Of the Minds The next day I reached out to my friend, Nate Trachte. I told him about my Avalanche Rescue Course and the conversation I'd had with my instructor. I asked him if he had ever thought about the feasibility of a crowd-sourced snowpack data, weather, and ava- lanche observations website. To my luck, he had. Neither of us are avalanche experts, but we have a shared passion for backcountry skiing in our moun- tains. I also felt that if anyone were to pour their heart and mind into something like this, it would be Nate. It seemed easy enough to do; someone just had to do it, do it well, and get the appropriate response and support from the community. We knew there was a chance that the community wouldn't utilize the resource, and that it could fail. We recognized other efforts before ours to do something similar. After more brainstorming together, we left the conversation open-ended. The next day Nate emailed me the beginnings of a website, Adirondack Community Avalanche Observa- tions. He said he just needed an observation form to embed onto the website. As luck would have it, I spent that morning researching observation forms from av- alanche centers across the country. I took what made sense for our mountains and added those aspects into a Google Form. These things included, date, time, location, aspect, elevation, and any avalanche "red flags"—whumpfing, shooting cracks, recent avalanch- es, etc.—witnessed. Without even knowing it, we had created something together, what would soon be The Adirondack Community Avalanche Project. A few days later, after editing our work and building it out, we skied up the Whiteface Mountain toll road, discussed the project, skied down the mostly glare-ice surface, and launched The Adirondack Community Av- alanche Project, or ADK Avy, that evening. Despite the abysmal yet truly Adirondack conditions of the day, we drove away with big grins knowing we were about to do something big and scary, but important. This page, from left to right: Back- country skiers dig a pit to assess snow layers. Caitlin Kelly Photo Skiers ascend one of the many slides on Colden with the aid of crampons. Nick Zachara Photo. A skier reaps the benefits of a long approach and stable snowpack. Nick Zachara Photo Opposite, top to bottom: A thrilling descent from Colden such as this requires careful assessment of the snowpack. Nick Zachara Photo. Digging through layers of snow reveals important information about the snowpack

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