A wintry landscape in Minnesota’s north country can have a dual personality: expansive fields of glistening, rolling, snow-covered hills and pillowy mounds gracefully clinging to limbs and boughs throughout our forests; while potentially life-threatening hazards such as collapsing hillsides of snow, deep wells, and deceptively hidden pockets and wells create a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde landscape in what may appear to be an alluring, winter wonderland.
Although our region doesn’t receive the amounts of snow common to the mountainous regions out west, Minnesota’s topography is diverse enough to create dangers from snow accumulations at levels that could be just as life-threatening—demanding our awareness of those dangers anytime we travel in our own snow country.
AVALANCHES
Landscapes featuring steep, snow-covered slopes can breed avalanches that may have enough volume to severely injury or even prove fatal to those caught in its path. Unstable snowpack accumulated on slope angles of 30º-40º are most prone to collapsing, and most often triggered by human activity (skiing/snowmobiling/snowshoeing).
CORNICES
A snow cornice is an overhanging edge of snow formed by wind blowing snow, projected and extending out over sharp terrain breaks such as ridge lines or steep embankments. Often undetected when approached from their backside, the leading edge of these snow lips are unsupported and only as strong as the integrity and load of the snow beyond the solid land-base from which they have formed.
Danger lies in the height one might fall upon their collapse, the type of terrain below, and the possibility of being buried beneath the volume of snow in the cornice. It’s important to pay careful attention to the lay of the land and potential ridge/bluff/bank edges that could produce these wind-generated overhangs—and avoid stepping out onto them or walking too closely underneath these potential collapsing volumes of snow.
SNOW BRIDGES
Sometimes the same dynamics that can form a cornice can project snow across narrow gullies, air pocket/depressions, or steeply-banked streams, spanning the space and leaving an opening beneath the snow—creating an arch or snow ‘bridge’ across the surface.
Stream beds filled solid with snow can be burrowed out by melting spring thaws that create tunnel-like corridors along the surface of the stream, creating an overhanging archway of fragile, non-weight-bearing snow still deceptively connecting one bank to the other. Injuries from a long or hard fall, deep water, and entrapment are just a few of the dangers from a collapsing snow bridge.
TREE WELLS
Heavy or frequent snowfalls in a spruce/evergreen forest can create depressions around the base of some trees as upper branches act as an umbrella to prevent snow from accumulating deeply right up to its base/trunk. Instead, a deep-walled depression or well is formed beneath those branches creating a snow pit several feet deep.
Approaching too closely (snowshoeing) or veering off into the trees (skiing, snowboarding) and crashing into a well can cause the victim to have a suffocating face plant, buried head-first down into deep, fine, incapacitating snow. Tree wells are almost impossible to self-rescue from, and if buried deeply beneath the overhanging, snow-burdened branches, one may be completely concealed from the view of searchers.
PLAYING IT SAFE
Like ice, traveling across snow is never 100% safe! Knowing the potential risks of trekking in snowy backcountry is critical to your safety and having the sense to select alternative routes if necessary. When tromping or gliding across a smooth mantle of snow, you cannot be certain of what you are actually traveling on top of or how far below you solid ground actually is. Changing weather and temperatures can cause snow conditions to change from when you first started out, and the return/final route may be fraught with new dangers.
Winter’s dual personality beckons enjoyment of its beauty coupled with the precautions of its potentially more danger disposition. When in doubt, re-route.
Be safe, be smart, and have fun out there!
