The Blizzard of 2003

In Public by Anna Debattiste

Reflections from CSAR’s executive director, Jeff Sparhawk

When I think back over my life, which includes 35 years responding to backcountry SAR emergencies, many memorable incidents stick with me.  One of the most influential was the blizzard of March 2003.

It had already been a snowy year when the upslope blizzard hit.  Late in the afternoon of the first day, the call came in for an avalanche across the only access road to the Eldora Ski Area.  I loaded Kiyla in the truck and headed up.  The debris on the road was over my head.  No cars were visible in the debris; the road was impassable, and we couldn’t be sure no cars had been swept over the edge.  Kiyla and I were the first dog team to arrive and we conducted a hasty search of the debris field on the road and below, finding nothing.  

The vehicles coming out of Eldora were backing up from the avalanche debris all the way to the parking lot.  This was fast becoming a major incident.  The area above the road was not a traditional avalanche starting zone, but rather a small cliffy area, below treeline, overlaid with chain link fencing to keep rocks from falling on the road.  As far as we could determine, there was no remaining hangfire.  As all backcountry SAR incidents in Boulder are multi-agency, we took a tactical pause to create a unified incident plan.  Members from Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, Nederland Fire Department, Boulder Sheriff’s Office, and Front Range Rescue Dogs would keep people safe while getting plows to open the road.  But our plan was buried as soon as it was developed.  Another avalanche came down, in the exact same slide path as the first.  Luckily, nobody was on the debris.

Photo by Dale Atkins

Our hangfire was what was falling out of the sky and I guess our avalanches were probably technically sluffs, big sluffs.  It was snowing hard – maybe 4 to 6 inches per hour – with just the right – wrong – environmental conditions to create a load-release rhythm of about 30 minutes on this first slidepath.  It took us all some time to comprehend how a never-before-seen slide path was loading and continually releasing.  None of us had experienced nor read about something like this.

Over a hundred cars were stuck between the debris and the ski area.    Eldora employees were not letting anyone else leave the area, so we had a somewhat defined set of issues to solve.  That is, until another avalanche released over the road, up closer to the ski area.  It wasn’t as large and no one was trapped for long, but it was again on a slope that had never slid before.

It was cold, dark, and snowing so hard that visibility with or without lights was terrible.  We had over a hundred people trapped on the road and an unknown number still at the ski area.  Avalanches continued to release at the bottom and top of the road, with some smaller ones along the road hitting the stuck vehicles, in which we’d advised people to take shelter until we could get them out.  We had limited resources, as roads across the county were closing and plows were having difficulty getting to us.  Based on the broken terrain above, the debris fields on the road developed into gullies and ridges taller than a person.

Our incident objectives, constantly shifting and adapting, were to keep everyone safe or get them to safety as quickly as possible, to get everyone off the access road by bringing them down to the Nederland High School or back up to Eldora for the night, and to get the road opened as soon as it was safe.  

The tactics we settled on were to station a small group of responders in a safe area just above the lowest and largest debris field, who would stage subjects, wait for an avalanche, then escort them quickly across the debris to safety.  We did not have the ability to put transceivers on the subjects, and we needed to get the responders back to the uphill side of the debris before the next avalanche ran. We divided the road into smaller sections, with a few responders assigned to each, roving their sections to keep people in their cars until they were released and digging out cars if they were hit by avalanches with people still in them. We also divided the road into an upper and lower area patrolled by our two search dog teams on snowmobiles.  Jenny and Tika took the upper area and Kiyla and I took the lower area.  Fortunately, Jenny and I were both leaders within RMRG and FRRD, so we could be deployed as both supervisors and hands-on tactical resources.

The people we evacuated had to leave everything in their cars and run quickly with us in the gaps between the avalanches.  Few had flashlights, and they were frightened.  Some were families with small children.  There was at least one instance when a person was pinned against their car trying to get out just as another avalanche hit the car.  At one point, I was just outside the debris, spotting for our responders who had returned from a trip back across the avalanche, when the next avalanche came down.  Sensing it coming, I tackled Kiyla up against the guardrail.  I remember thinking that I did not want to be pushed off the road and buried somewhere on the lower slope.  If we stayed up against the guardrail, we had fully equipped and trained responders less than 20 feet away.  Steve, my good friend and RMRG teammate, saw what I did and watched in dread as I was enveloped in snow.  A few seconds later, Kiyla and I emerged into Steve’s light.  We were only covered by a few inches and could easily stand and walk out.  

Thanks to our adaptability and a huge team effort, we were able to clear the people off the road sometime in the middle of the night.  Once cleared, I was sent down the canyon to Boulder to stage avalanche dog teams at the bottom and top of Boulder Canyon as the road was closing.  Up until this point, the Boulder County plows had been able to keep the canyon open as a one lane road, but I was the last one to pass through that night.  Somewhere around the narrows, my truck was hit by an avalanche and slid sideways toward Boulder Creek.  Somehow, I managed to accelerate downhill, escaping the slide and bouncing off the snow sidewalls left by snow plows.

Our team of teams came together because of our mutual respect and trust.  This unprecedented emergency required a tight knit group of the right people from all of the agencies working together, and I could not have been prouder of our responders.  

But I was merely a tip of one spear on this incident.  That first night, while we struggled with our “mass-casualty” division on the access road, others were looking at the bigger picture.  We had hundreds of people stranded at the Eldora Ski Area.  The roof of the Nederland Community Center had partially collapsed – I’m glad we used the high school as the shelter.  Roads were closing and motorists were trapped.  Other avalanches were undoubtedly occurring, but thankfully there were no reports of people or vehicles caught in them.  As a final coup-de-grâce, when a county plow was first able to make it to the Eldora access road, its rear axle promptly broke, disabling it and adding another obstacle to opening the road.  At least 87 inches fell that night in the mountains, with 30 inches in Denver.

Possibly because of exhaustion, the lessened intensity, and the intervening 20 years, my memory of the next few days is less distinct.  RMRG teams struggled with ski and snowmobile teams to reach residents elsewhere in the county to deliver medications or to evacuate them to safety.  A Colorado National Guard Blackhawk was able to deliver supplies to those snowed-in at Eldora.  Unfortunately, those trapped at Eldora were not allowed to ski until conditions improved or snowcats could make their way to pack the snow.  A helicopter was brought in and CDOT delivered explosives to stabilize the slopes above the access road before it was plowed with a rotary plow.  The Colorado Avalanche Information Center, Alpine Rescue Team, Summit County Rescue Group, and probably other teams sent rescuers to assist and be on standby.

I returned to provide oversight and a search dog to the Eldora area the next day.  We were never completely sure our hasty search would have found someone buried in that initial slide, not until the snow was cleared off the road and the debris below the road melted.  Communication was challenging, as this was before ubiquitous cell phones and our radio system was not as extensive.  The Boulder Sheriff’s Office had a unified command with Nederland Fire and Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, but the concept of ICS was newer then, and working out who was in charge of what, when and where was not a simple thing.  I had never wondered, until then, where BSAR fits in a disaster situation.  But this was clearly a disaster and everywhere had become the backcountry.

Ten years later, another disaster struck – the 2013 floods in Boulder and Larimer Counties – and the difference in the response was striking.  In the intervening years, thanks to the Boulder disaster manager and the emergency response community, Boulder created a disaster management plan as a result of the blizzard. It showed in the smoother and more organized interagency functioning during the floods.  Ten years of collaboration and collective advancement of ICS made a difference. On the first day of the floods, I was a tactically focused search dog team for one drainage.  The next day, I moved to a division supervisor role and saw a bigger picture, and I understood the importance of disaster management planning.  Disasters may only happen every ten or twenty years, but as BSAR responders, we need to be looking ahead and expecting them, understanding how we will work as part of a larger team of teams in our communities.  On both of these disasters, it was an honor to work alongside the Boulder Sheriff’s Office, all of the fire and EMS agencies, Boulder Emergency Squad, and my two teams, RMRG and FRRD.

My backcountry SAR career has led me to a deep appreciation of the ability to adapt to any backcountry situation and quickly engineering creative and safe SAR solutions.  While painstakingly maintaining expertise in a broad array of disciplines, we responders humbly provide our services wherever we can provide value.  At times we are leaders, at times we are followers, and at times others with different skills are needed.  We do our best to manage risks but we put ourselves in difficult and risky situations because that is, fundamentally, who we are.  Our stories are all unique, and through them we define ourselves and appreciate how the world is a little bit better because of us.