Is the Wilderness Too Dangerous for Skiers? No.

Early Tuesday morning on Jan. 8, a pair of helicopters flew a search grid over the national forest and Pecos Wilderness, east of Santa Fe. Two snowboarders had gone missing in a storm that Saturday and, for the past two days, three search-and-rescue teams had been attempting to reach a steep cirque, just north of Ski Santa Fe, known as the Nambe Chutes. On Sunday, the lost boarders had used a cell phone to place a distress call.

�We heard they�d taken the Millennium chairlift to the top, skied Chutes, and had already been out overnight,� Rich Siemer, 38, a local architect who�s volunteered with Atalaya Search and Rescue for the past 13 years, says. But the blizzard, which shut down the entire West Coast and dumped more than two feet of snow above Santa Fe, also kept the teams from reaching the area or even seeing into it from the ridges above.

Again, Monday night, after the search had been suspended for the day, the pair had called for help. Adam Putnam, 36, a newly minted Albuquerque emergency room doc at Lovelace Health Systems, and his fianc�e, Rachel Fehl, 30, a nurse at Carrie Tingley Hospital, were holed up in a snow cave. The two recently moved to Albuquerque from Pennsylvania and, although both are accomplished winter athletes, neither was familiar with the area. They thought they could see the lights of Santa Fe through the storm. �After three nights out everyone was worried about how these folks were going to survive,� Siemer says.

Now, the weather had improved enough to continue the search by air. The helicopters�one from the state police and the other, a Blackhawk from the New Mexico National Guard�looked like specs over the round white summits. At about 9 am, the Blackhawk hovered over a ridge a few miles south of Ski Santa Fe. The spotter onboard had pinpointed the lost boarders after they�d called 911 for a second time that morning: �We�ve had three [helicopters] pass overhead but they can�t see us �cause there are 50 foot junipers around,� Putnam said. �We�ve got a chopper immediately to the east right now and he�s heading north. He�s heading north, and he�s to our east.�

�I�ve given them your GPS coordinates according to your cell,� the state police dispatcher told him. �A latitude of 35.68876 and longitude negative 105.978862�What are you wearing?� (Those coordinates, which actually map a cell tower near Buckman Road, were one of the pieces of misinformation that slowed the rescue effort.)

With local TV cameras rolling, the Blackhawk hoisted Putnam and Fehl aboard, cold, tired and hungry, but otherwise unhurt. The incident, which made local and national news, raises questions about how the searchers had been sent north when Fehl and Putnam say they had always planned to go south. But more troubling than how and why the two were lost and found is this: Theirs was third  search-and-rescue mission to Ski Santa Fe in the span of three weeks, and the second rescue involving out-of-bounds snowboarders.

Traditionally, skiing in America means buying a lift ticket and schussing down named runs of various marked difficulties�green circle, blue square, black diamond�cut through the forest. But as resorts have become crowded, more people are venturing into the fresh powder and empty vistas beyond ski area boundaries. The trend, called sidecountry�technically the backcountry, but accessed via chairlift�is booming. The Ski Industry Association estimates that the volume of backcountry skis grew nearly 40 percent between 2006 and 2007.

There�s a catch, though: �They need to understand that once they leave, they�re on their own,� Cody Sheppard, 58, the head of Santa Fe�s ski patrol, says. �I can�t strip the patrol to go on a long drawn-out search. Our primary responsibility is to our skiers in the area. These people knew they were going out of bounds; they got themselves into a situation they were lucky to survive.�

Of course, no ski patroller is going to sit idle while someone is in trouble.

�For humanitarian reasons,� Sheppard says. �We want to help people out. We�re already up here, we�re already on skis and we have lift access to the top of the mountain. The 911 dispatch is aware that we can get there quickly. A few weeks ago, we had somebody in the Big Tesuque area with a broken femur. It was late in the day, and we were able to get the call because he was able to dial 911. In that situation we completed the entire rescue before search and rescue got there. The way I see it, we can be a quick first-response team as long as it doesn�t cut the mountain short. We do a few of these a year.�

This conflict of safety versus access is playing out now at resorts across the West, where most ski lifts operate by permit on Forest Service land. Some ski area arrangements with the Forest Service, like Santa Fe�s, call for open boundaries. Here, skiers can leave the resort any time. Others, like Taos�, have closed boundaries.

�In conjunction with the Forest Service, we have put a restriction on accessing the backcountry from our lifts,� Chris Stagg, 56, vice president of Taos Ski Valley, says. �We�d prefer to have open boundaries; we just don�t just want the liability. And I don�t mean in the strict sense. We�d end up doing the rescues. If the report comes in that there was an avalanche in the backcountry, the patrol guys are going to go jumping out there trying to help. And that puts them at risk.�

More and more, though, ski areas are opening their boundaries by creating what are known as backcountry gates. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, in Wyoming, instituted a �closed boundary, open gate� policy in the winter of 1999-2000. Rather than allowing the public to duck the rope anywhere and venture out, backcountry gates focus the traffic and provide no-nonsense warnings about the dangers beyond the resort. Some include avalanche forecast information and sign-out sheets, where people can leave their intended routes. A few gates even have built-in transceivers, which confirm that passing skiers have their avalanche beacons properly turned on.


Backcountry Basics

Avalanche Beacon:

Back Country Access� tracker emits radio waves that can be picked up and homed in on by your unburied buddies. $290;

Shovel:

The best avalanche shovels have a metal blade and few frills. Black Diamond�s Deploy fits the bill. $65;

Probe:

It�s like a tent pole to find an avalanche victim under the snow once your beacon says you�re close. Kind of morbid, but you�ll be glad to have one in a slide. Black Diamond QuickDraw Guide 300. $60;

Gear up, then take a level one avalanche

certification class at Taos Ski Valley. $120;

Similar to Ski Santa Fe, Jackson Hole borders national forest on the south and heavily regulated terrain�Grand Teton National Park�on the north. (Santa Fe borders the Pecos Wilderness on the north, which prohibits all mechanized vehicles, including those used by rescue personnel.)

�Back in �99, there really wasn�t an established search-and-rescue system in the backcountry, outside the national park,� Anna Olson, brand director at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, says. �The Forest Service was very concerned there were going to be a ton of people back there who�d have accidents. They wanted to know how they were going to rescue them�and who was going to pay for it.� Now, Jackson has a full-time search-and-rescue officer, working out of the sheriff�s office, who supervises some 60 volunteers.

Ski Santa Fe, on the other hand, has managed its borders by not managing them. There are no signs beyond the orange discs attached to the boundary ropes.

�We have no enforcement capabilities to keep people from going under that rope and into the national forest,� Sheppard says. �And I don�t think the Forest Service feels it�s appropriate to close it off.�

As a result, Santa Fe�s three volunteer search-and-rescue teams have grown up with the open borders. And they�ve noticed a pattern.

�Every time we have a good snow year, it seems there are one or two rescues,� Siemer says. �This year, it�s only mid-January, and there have already been two occasions where people have needed to be rescued.�

Sheppard agrees: �In good snow years you have a real increase. A lot of those more adventurous types want to get out there.� Which is actually a good thing: �My opinion is that it�s an issue of educating people�not preventing them from doing it,� Sheppard says. As for the backcountry gates, Sheppard thinks they send the wrong message. �In my experience, a gate or a sign simply tells people there is a doorway there to something.�

The Forest Service seems to be less aware of the trend toward skiing the sidecountry.

�It�s OK to ski in the wilderness area, but I�m talking cross-country skiing,� Santa Fe Ranger District press officer Lawrence Lujan says. �[Backcountry skiing] is allowed, but it�s not encouraged. At this time last year, I was answering a media question for this exact same situation. People are going out where they�re not supposed to, and they wind up getting in trouble.�

The Forest Service plans to release a sheet of winter recreation tips in the next two weeks.

But with all this talk of whether folks should be bombing down backcountry chutes on powder boards (note: the author does, every chance he gets) people might be confused. Steep chutes in Santa Fe? Where?

The southern Sangre de Cristos above Santa Fe�though they look like the sort of hills only a New Englander would conflate into mountains�are huge. They top out above 12,000 feet, and so do the chairlifts that serve them. Steep bowls, narrow chutes and big cliffs�it�s all there, just over the ridges to the north and west of Ski Santa Fe.

�That�s the key thing,� Sheppard says. �You really don�t see any of that stuff from the lift. If you were riding up the chair and you could see all that enticing terrain, we�d probably have a lot more issues with people going over there. Unless you�re a local, and you already know about it, you�re not going to see any of it.�

That�s the secret of Ski Santa Fe, what makes it a toss-up with Taos for the best powder day the week after a storm. After a chairlift ride and a 15-minute to hour-long trudge�about the same amount of time it takes to get to Taos� best hike-to terrain�an adventurous skier can be looking down the gut of an avalanche chute steeper than a cellar staircase or swooshing easy turns in an untracked glade. It�s the stuff of Warren Miller films and cliff-jumping flicks produced by the �bros� of Teton Gravity Research�the soaring, effortless, intoxicating, deadly kind of skiing. (They never seem to show the �deadly� part in those movies.)

New Mexico snow is notoriously unstable. These movies are usually filmed on the coast of Alaska or British Columbia. Wet storms coming off the ocean tend to coat the mountains in a type of snow that behaves more like cake frosting. In New Mexico�s high-altitude, the snow usually falls as dry as sawdust. Dry snow, powerful sun and a whole raft of variables that snow scientists and avalanche forecasters study for whole lifetimes and never fully understand, make New Mexico avalanches among the hardest in the world to predict. It�s a cruel trick.


So, You�re Lost In The Woods

Rich Siemer breaks down a typical search-and-rescue mission, day by day.

   

Day 1

There�s always a greater sense of urgency, depending on what day of the week it is. Everyone�s a volunteer, and they�ll come if they can. Often it seems like you have the best chance of finding people sooner. If the subject can be tracked with a dog, the sooner you get there the better the scent trail is.

Day 2

After the initial rush, it�s harder to get volunteers to go out. Or, if there are clues, as there were in the case of Putnam and Fehl, additional resources might be pulled in. If you haven�t found anything, you�re starting to worry that the subjects might be developing fatigue and dehydration. Dehydration leads to all sorts of other problems, including hypothermia.

Day 3

If there are still no clues, searchers are going to get frustrated. By this time, you�ve searched all of the trails, ridgetops and drainages. You�re thinking either the person is injured or in an obscure location. If a person�s not on a trail or on a prominent terrain feature like a drainage or ridgetop, he or she is going to be extremely hard to find.

Day 4

Most of the time, if, after the third day, no clues have turned up, the search is suspended. If you�re lost that long, it�s time to channel Joe Simpson or Aron Ralston and drag your bloody stumps back to civilization. Just keep visualizing the zeroes attached to your memoir advance.


Still, these mountains have attracted some of the world�s best alpinists. Anatoli Boukreev, the famous Russian mountaineer and author of the first-hand account of the Everest 1996 disaster,

The Climb,

used to call Santa Fe home. Had he not died on Annapurna in 1997, he�d likely have beat Ed Viesturs to summiting all of the world�s 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen. Between stints in the Himalayas, Boukreev stayed in shape by running the ridges above Santa Fe. Dave Hahn, the world�s most successful living Everest guide (he�d insist the �living� part is a much bigger deal than making it to the top on nine occasions) splits his time up the road as a Taos ski patroller.

And with their mellow slopes and 300-plus days of sun each year, they�ve attracted Texans.

�We have a great variety,� Sheppard says. �About half of our skiers come from in-state�Albuquerque, Santa Fe�and half come from the surrounding states such as Texas and Oklahoma. The ones that are coming in from out of state are more of the beginner/intermediates. For the most part, the people going out of bounds�and this isn�t always true because you get people who say, �Oh I�ve heard of Big Tesuque,� and they just stumble out there�tend to be locals that know it and have done it for years.�

That�s the great paradox of Ski Santa Fe. It�s an intermediate skier�s mountain backed by world-class expert backcountry. Most of the time, when the two mix everything turns out fine. But eventually, when enough people, intermediates or otherwise, press their luck, something bad happens and Rich Siemer gets a phone call.

More often than not, Siemer can write the narrative by heart. Snowboarders descend into Santa Fe Municipal Watershed and can�t get out. Or else they get out to the Audubon Center on Upper Canyon Road�eight miles of postholing through quicksand-like snow and deadfall�and are very tired. In the case of Putnam and Fehl, Siemer had a hunch all along:

�I�d always thought there was a possibility that they�d skied into the Watershed side,� he says. (The area that supplies Santa Fe with its drinking water is under special closure, and entering it can draw a $5,000 fine and jail time.) �I�ve seen many times when people have made a mistake�especially when visibility was poor�they�ve gone 180 degrees away from where they thought they were going.�

Most of the time, rescue �subjects,� as they�re called, don�t have to pay the cost of their extractions, though there are certain cases of negligence and blunt stupidity, Lawrence Lujan says, where they are hit with the bill. But for the most part, the search-and-rescue operations are done by volunteers. Helicopter airtime is counted toward National Guard training missions that would have been picked up by taxpayers, anyway.

There are a lot of things people can do to lessen the chance that they�ll have to meet Siemer and his team in the woods. One of the best is to get to know the area by hiking and biking it during the summer. Both Putnam and Fehl had taken an avalanche course, but, ultimately, it was not knowing the terrain that got them into trouble. Beyond that, Sheppard advises, �Research where you�re going. Get maps. Check the weather. Mother Nature can be very harsh.�

And Siemer adds, �Invariably, the people we�re going and looking for�they�re not the people who are carrying a beacon, probe and shovel. And who have taken an avalanche course.� Taos Ski Valley now offers classes with their patrollers.

Besides soaking at 10,000 Waves and rolling spares at Silva Lanes, skiing in the backcountry is one of the best things to do in Santa Fe. While a few rescues might lead some to think skiing out of bounds is too dangerous, Sheppard takes the long view: �You just need to do it properly.�

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