STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
It didn’t set well with the Coca-Cola delivery man. But powder hounds rejoiced Friday as March came roaring in like a lion and the valley woke up to two feet of fresh snow on the ground.
Still, the snow brought perils.
Two skiers had to be resuscitated with CPR on Baldy Friday after they fell head first into deep snow, suffering snow immersion suffocation.
Blaine County Road and Bridge closed Warm Springs Road at the end of the pavement Friday afternoon after a few avalanches streamed across the road. And Highway 75 was closed from Smiley Creek to Galena Lodge early in the morning after 19 inches of snow made for tough driving conditions there. ITD reopened it last night but advised motorists to be cautious.
The Sawtooth Avalanche Center warned of the most dangerous avalanche conditions of the winter, with heavy snow and wind combining to overload a weak snowpack. Avalanches had already been seen this week at Imogene in the Sawtooth Mountains, at the headwaters of the Smoky Mountains, at Gladiator near Galena Lodge, on Titus Peak, in the Boulder Mountains and at Lake Creek.
“Widespread avalanching will occur,” said Forecaster Ethan Davis, urging people to stay out of the backcountry for a few days.
Despite the best efforts of Idaho Transportation Department and Ketchum road crews, those making an early morning commute had to drive in the tracks of the cars before them on Highway 75 leading into Ketchum. Once they arrived in Ketchum, they found a food delivery truck blocking a northbound lane of Main Street and a Coca Cola semi truck that had gotten stuck trying to turn onto 4th Street from Main Street.
Guests at the Knob Hill Inn woke to find their cars completely covered in snow, while shopkeepers in the shopping plaza across the highway had to shovel out parking spaces in order to park.
And elk had to step high to get through the deep snow.
The Blaine County School District had cancelled Friday’s classes on Thursday. But students had no trouble getting to Bald Mountain to ski the 20 or 21 inches of new powder that had fallen since 5 a.m. the day before.
Lines for the gondola and River Run chairlift stretched across the Big Wood River Bridge as powder hounds waited 95 minutes for the ski patrol to open the front side of the mountain.
“And they said we wouldn’t get powder this year!” said Conrad Foster, a student at Wood River Middle School and an athlete with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.
“If only it’d come on Dec. 2, instead of March 2!” added his friend Kyle Miller.
Foster bent over, letting Miller practice his drumming with his ski poles on his back to kill time. Nearby Luke Beste juggled three snowballs—a skill he’d learned watching You Tube.
Occasionally, nervous parents came by cautioning the growing cadre of young skiers and boarders.
“Okay, here’s the deal, guys,” Kyle’s father Larry Miller counseled several of the boys. “No trees today. It’s going to be deadly to ski in the trees today. We don’t want anyone buried today. They’re not even going to open Seattle Ridge or the Bowls or Olympics today and we don’t want anyone to die today. So stay together, and I want the front guy to wait for the last guy.”
At last, a cheer resounded across River Run Plaza as ski patrollers wearing large red avalanche airbag packs gave the go ahead.
The tracks of ski patrollers could be seen running through snow on slopes that hardly anyone had skied since Thanksgiving Day a hundred days earlier when a couple feet of pre-season snow seemed to portend a bountiful snow season. Upper Holiday looked like a groomed slope, its moguls filled in by the new snow.
But at the top the snow on Ridge had been blown into frozen waves by winds gusting between 9 and 20 miles per hour.
Skiers and boarders began falling in the tricky conditions as soon as they got off the chairlift, leaving more yard sales on the slope than can be found in the valley on a summer Saturday.
One young snowboarder found himself in a three-foot deep foxhole on the South Slopes, trying to raise himself out with his snowboard. A ski patroller enjoyed knee-deep snow on the cliff below Lower Holiday, as others went off in search of less challenging terrain.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many skiers and boarders lying around the slopes!” said Hailey skier Fred Burmester, as he dove into a plate of steaming Pad Thai back at the lodge.
The storms of the past week, believed to be evidence of a weakening La Nina, have given cross country trails that have been starved for snow all winter a new leash on life.
The Blaine County Recreation District set about grooming its trails at Croy Nordic west of Hailey and the bike path as the snow continued to fall. And Sun Valley Nordic Center prepared to open its popular Proctor and Boundary loops for the first time this season.
The snow played havoc with a number of events, canceling the POV Breakfast for the Family of Woman Film Festival and a high school play. Hemingway Tech Teacher Scott Slonim’s class lost the opportunity to interview French filmmaker Phillippe Van Leeuw about his film “In Syria” which dramatizes what it’s like to live in the middle of a war zone.
The film will be seen at 7 tonight at the Sun Valley Opera House as part of the Family of Woman Film Festival.
But Kevin Lupton and two dozen Wood River High School and Middle School students did make it to Nampa to compete at the 2018 Idaho VEX State Championship.
“From what I’ve heard, the WRHS and WRMS robots performed well in the qualifiers and have multiple teams competing in the finals,” said Danni Dean, whose son Luke is among the competitors.
Meanwhile, the biggest storm of the season from Gulf of Alaska to hit California triggered blizzard and avalanche warnings in the Sierra Nevada and concerns about mudslides and flash flooding further south.
Connie Smith, one of those attending the Family of Woman Film Festival, said she would have been evacuated had she been home in Montecito, where a Jan. 9 rainstorm triggered mudslides that destroyed homes and killed at least 21 people.
“Everybody’s on edge,” she said. “But, hopefully….”
As it turned out, evacuation orders were lifted Friday after the worst of the rain passed.