Kevin Grove knows firsthand the immense power and danger of avalanches.

The avid Central Oregon backcountry skier has experienced three “close calls,” one of which he caught on video in January 2010:

Starting down a powdery slope on Middle Sister, Grove triggers an avalanche from just above him. He skis fast and straight across the slope to get out of the way, but the slide knocks him off his feet. He digs into stable snow with his whippet — a ski pole with an ice ax on the end — which pops him out of the cascading snow and back onto his skis, safely away from the avalanche.

“I wasn’t really thinking at the time,” Grove says. “Had I done a 10-second quick test, I wouldn’t have skied the slope. I don’t think I would have died, but it definitely was good size, and I could have broken something had I gone all the way down that slope. Definitely a wake-up call.”

That experience, combined with two other narrow escapes on North Sister and losing two friends to avalanches in the West, has fueled Grove’s passion for snow safety in the backcountry.

The video footage of the Middle Sister incident, recorded by Grove’s partner that day, should persuade all backcountry enthusiasts to be educated and prepared for their next outing.

Grove, 41, and several other Central Oregon skiers are board members of the Central Oregon Avalanche Association, whose mission is to increase avalanche safety in our region. This winter, the COAA is launching a professional field observers program, in which COAA members will assess snowpack on a regular basis and share their findings on www.coavalanche.org with as many as four posts per week.

A long-term goal of the COAA is to establish an avalanche forecast center in Bend within two to three years.

“Our backcountry numbers are rising, probably exponentially,” says Grove, an engineering and physics professor at Central Oregon Community College who also teaches a class called snow science. “There’s a tremendous amount of backcountry users in our area, and very little information out there in terms of snowpack, or weather, or avalanche hazards.”

Nationwide, sales of alpine touring boots — which can be converted into heel-free soles for backcountry use — increased 27 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to Snowsports Industries America.

“The gear is better, lighter, more efficient,” Grove says. “Snowmobiles are more powerful and stronger so snowmobiles can cover much more terrain and mileage within one given day. People want solitude and want to get out there (in the backcountry), and the reality is the numbers are dramatically increasing across the country. It’s growing like mad.”

The Northwest Avalanche Center is based in Seattle and offers forecasts for the Mount Hood area, but for nowhere else in Oregon. The Wallowa Avalanche Center serves only the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon. The COAA is in preliminary discussions with both of those organizations to possibly form a regional avalanche center network that would include several areas in Oregon, according to Grove. Whether that happens or not, the COAA is pushing forward with its goal of instituting a forecast center in Bend.

Grove acknowledges that Central Oregon does not have a “tremendous amount” of avalanche activity, but he notes two deaths in the past four years: one last winter and one in 2010, both victims snowmobiling on Paulina Peak.

“There is clearly avalanche hazard and danger that, to me, warrants an avalanche forecasting center,” says Grove, a backcountry enthusiast for more than 20 years. “It is really pretty remarkable that an area of our size with as many users as we have does not have an avalanche forecasting center yet.”

Grove stresses that the field observations the COAA plans to conduct this winter — digging pits in certain areas to analyze the snowpack — are different from avalanche forecasts.

“We’ll only be talking about what we’re seeing at that point in time,” Grove explains. “An avalanche safety report as we see it at that time. So we won’t be telling you what to expect tomorrow. That’s where a forecast differs.”

Grove encourages all backcountry users to post observations on the COAA website or on Twitter to @coavy.

The Cascade Range can be “a bit tricky” for avalanches, Grove explains, because of a maritime snowpack that can be relatively safe for long periods of time. But those periods are juxtaposed with short periods of high to extreme avalanche hazards.

“Those long periods of low avalanche hazard lull people into a false sense of security,” Grove says. “And then we’ll get a 2-foot dump of snow overnight and people are really excited and fired up to go out and ski, and they don’t have their avalanche eyes or avalanche safety brain working, and they trigger an avalanche.”

Grove adds that backcountry skiers and snowmobilers should understand the elements of an avalanche, which include weather, snowpack, terrain and the human factor.

Avalanche danger is greater on bigger mountains with bigger terrain features, such as the Three Sisters, Broken Top and Mount Jefferson, Grove says. But even smaller terrain features have the potential to slide, as a skier triggered an avalanche on Tumalo Mountain last winter. Tumalo is one of the most popular and accessible backcountry ski locations in Central Oregon, and skiers love to makes turns down its northeast bowl. It is not known for significant avalanche activity.

Grove says he happened to be on Tumalo shortly after the avalanche.

“That was a massive slide,” he recalls. “I was surprised at the size and the scale of the avalanche. And I knew the guy. He was partially buried and carried for quite a ways, but he survived.”

The COAA offers free one-hour “Know Before You Go” avalanche clinics, and the association is trying to raise funds for a forecast center through donations on its website. Grove hopes such a center can be a collaborative effort with the U.S. Forest Service.

He envisions that the forecast center would provide coverage for three zones within Central Oregon: a southern zone that would include Paulina Peak, a central zone that would include Todd Ridge and Tumalo Mountain, and a Cascades zone that would include Broken Top and the Three Sisters.

Observers at those locations would dig pits in the snowpack, looking for a weak layer and determining the likelihood of failure of that weak layer. They would then relay their observations to forecasters at the avalanche center, who can examine weather models to make forecasts.

“A classic recipe for an avalanche is a firm bed surface, a weak layer on top of that and a slab on top of that,” Grove explains. “The slab might be a wind-deposited snow event from the night before. The weak layer fails, and the slab moves on top of that bed surface (causing a slide).”

Aside from proper education and communication, backcountry users can mitigate avalanche hazard by skiing or snowmobiling on lower-angled terrain, slopes of less than 20 to 25 degrees, according to Grove.

Safety gear is crucial in the backcountry. At a minimum, a skier or snowmobiler should have an avalanche beacon, a probe and a shovel, Grove says. More and more backcountry enthusiasts are using airbag backpacks, which feature a trigger that, when pulled, inflates a bag around the snowrider’s head and causes him or her to rise to the surface of the snow.

Even with all the new, fancy gear, backcountry survival is ultimately about making wise decisions. Grove knows he made a bad decision on that January day in 2010 on Middle Sister.

And he is intent on educating others so they do not make a similar mistake.

— Reporter: 541-383-0318,

mmorical@bendbulletin.com