Avalanche awareness day takes place up at Marmot Basin

Despite less-than-ideal windy weather conditions, Marmot Basin played host to Avalanche Awareness Day on Saturday, Jan. 31. 

Park Warden and dog handler Darian Sillence, along with his 80-lbs. Shepherd Starsky, demonstrated how they search for victims of avalanches. The demonstration had Starsky traversing the hill behind the upper chalet searching for articles of clothing. 

Sillence explained that “people shed millions of cells a day...” and the snowpack is primarily made up of air. The cells “follow up through the air pockets and come out onto the surface,” he said, “where the wind picks it up and blows it across.” 

“It’s like a big cone of scent and the dog follows it in,” said Sillence. That’s why Starsky had such an easy time finding the buried articles of clothing, he added. 

Sillence and Starsky spend a lot of time training together as they are also used for drug and weapons searches. Starsky is trained to find the bad guy hidden in the attic or the good guy lost the in the woods, said Sillence. 

The Fitzhugh, along with a couple of other media outlets, watched a demonstration of a controlled avalanche by Marmot’s crew. Jeff Andrews, head of avalanche control at the mountain, said they were using a mixture of fertilizer and diesel fuel for the demonstration on the North Chutes area of the mountain. 

The wind was extreme at the upper elevations, but the demonstration proceeded as scheduled leaving onlookers with a better understanding of how avalanches are prevented by setting them off in the first place.