Roaring Fork Valley avalanche forecaster gets aerial assistance ahead of Wednesday snowpack talk

Avalanche forecasters have to do a lot of walking in order to get the information they need to provide accurate forecasts of avalanche danger. 

In the Roaring Fork Valley and elsewhere, that often means skiing upwards of 10 miles a day between the uphill walking and downhill skiing portion. This adds up over the course of the entire fall, winter, and spring season that they are offering forecasts to the public.

It can be made incomparably easier though, if forecasters can find a way into the air. 

That’s what the forecaster for the Central Mountains region, which Aspen and its associated backcountry terrain falls into, was doing on the bluebird morning of Tuesday, March 25 when he boarded an EcoFlight Cessna Centurion 210 airplane at the Aspen/Pitkin County airport. 

Dylan Craaybeek, the Central Mountains region forecaster for the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, was able to knock out visual observations on an incredibly wide ranging swath of popular backcountry skiing areas in the Elk Range region.

“It would take years to ski as many zones as we saw today and we still only covered a section of the Elk Range,” Craaybeek said. 

EcoFlight, the company that brought Craaybeek up into the sky to make avalanche observations, is a nonprofit dedicated to conservation via flights for scientists, politicians, and others to show them the environment from a macro perspective. 

“You can really see where the watersheds are, the continuousness and the contiguousness of the landscape, and it sort of gives the land a voice,” said Bruce Gordon, Founder and Chief Pilot of EcoFlight. 

That macro perspective can be valuable to avalanche forecasters or other researchers and scientists in the region. Visual observations of avalanches, or lack thereof, help Craaybeek build his forecast. Seeing the size, snow quality, aspect, and more qualities of the snow help Craaybeek analyze what’s occurring in the snowpack and where.

On a typical day, Craaybeek relies on his own walks and observations and supplements his forecasts with observations and photos sent in by other backcountry travelers throughout the day. 

However, the occasional aerial trip during the spring can give Craaybeek a macro-view of a larger portion of the region which helps him understand how the snow is likely to respond to increased solar radiation, temperatures, and lack of snow as the season settles in.

EcoFlight is hosting Craaybeek for a state of the snowpack talk at Hooch Craft and Cocktail Bar from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26 where he will discuss some of what he saw from the air. Attendees can expect to get valuable information on the snowpack as it is currently and as it is expected to evolve as well as conversations on conservation and climate from EcoFlight. 

More information can be found at https://aspenchamber.org/events/state-snowpack-ecoflight-and-caic.