To answer Tony C's question - who would want to ski in China? I watched the video that Matt posted and my 14 year old watched part of it too. We'd go - we would wait for there to be a very modest amount of infrastructure at Altay and we'd be there. Would I worry about slope instability? No I wouldn't - not sure why I would worry any more about slope stability in China than I would in North America. China is really seismically active and they have a long and strong track record of competency - I would imagine that this same rigour would be applied to slope control. Just because they may not ski a lot doesn't, in my mind, mean that they do not understand their snow pack. They have lived with it for centuries.
I'm enjoying following this post, thanks to all for contributing! Thanks RNZ for following my old China TR as well. Snow science in China is in it's infancy, in my opinion. Until the recent push into the far extremities where there is decent terrain and reasonable natural snowfalls (Changbaishan originally, with the cat skiing op in the east that started there a couple of seasons ago and then this past season, in Xinjiang with the start of the cat/heli op in Aletai we visited), then there wasn't the same need to have that level of experience and understanding of snow science and avalanche mitigation in the traditional Chinese resorts. I don't know what control work, if any, they are doing over in Changbaishan and what their experience is in regard to snowpack analysis and avalanche forecasting, but I have seen a little bit of what they are doing in Aletai.
Last season they had a pretty experienced Western guiding team, with 3 guides out from Canada working at the Aletai cat/heli operation. Hopefully some of them will be returning this season as they were the foundation of a strong avalanche mitigation program. I know at the end of last season, the operation bought a Dasiy Bell for avi control. Most of the terrain accessible by the cats and the snowmobiles is pretty mellow, so how much avalanche control they will need to do to mitigate those slopes, is probably not much. I think most of the mitigation will need to occur on the avalanche prone slopes above the access road into the snowpark. So those guys are getting prepared and seem to have some understanding now but I hope they continue to partner with Western guides and advisors (as I'm sure they will), for the near future at least, because it's till all brand new to them.
I think in general, without much experience and understanding of snow science and how avalanches occur, then the situation becomes very different. Thankfully in Aletai, where the operators had access to very experienced Western guides and advisors, then they took a much more proactive approach to avalanche mitigation and gaining knowledge in snow science. Without that, the situation could have been very different. You sense that the response to any issues/safety concerns would have been on a more reactive manner, without that support. The contrast between what was happening in Aletai and what we witnessed in Hemu, was very stark. It was a real eye opener and those that have read my report, know that it was one of the scariest times of my life.
In Hemu, where they were trying to start a winter operation for the first time, they had no experience in terms of snow science and there was no avalanche mitigation program in place. They didn't have any Western advisors on staff to help them, unlike in Aletai. That main road in, was my primary source of concern. Seeing the amount of avalanches on that road, seeing how there was no proactive measures taken to try and control the avalanche hazard, was alarming. All they could do, was wait for the avalanches to come down then they would clear them (don't forget that our welcome to the area was seeing the snowblowing machine, clearing the first avalanche, caught in a secondary avalanche!) . In my opinion, there was no proactive measures taken to try and mitigate the avalanche hazard surrounding the main road, whether that would be done by doing control work above the slopes, putting avalanche control barriers in place in start zones or building covers over the most exposed sections of road, some or all of those measures need to be taken to just get access to the resort. That's not taking into account the actual running of a guiding operation (they want to start a heli and cat operation there too). That's a whole other ball game right there.....
Remember that traditionally, the only skiers in this area previously, were hunters, where skiing was done for survival (for gathering food). Sure, living in the mountains does give you exposure to the mountains and the snowpack with a sense of where to go or where not to go, but I don't think that is necessarily the foundation and skills/experience required to for a proper, "safe" avalanche mitigation operation. Then there is the issue of having to work with the key government decision makers who lack even more experience than the locals in these areas, yet they call the shots.
Now, I have an interesting and very scary story, that relates to just this. On our way to Hemu, when we were driving up from Aletai, we came out of the desert and then finally started to get back up into the mountains. Initially, the mountains were pretty mellow, but as we got higher, the slopes above the road started to get pretty serious. I made the comment to Grant that I thought we were starting to get into potential avalanche terrain. Sure enough, we started to see some old slide debris and some obvious slide paths. We started to go up a pass and at the top of the pass, was a police control point with some big buildings and a large parking lot. I saw three prime gullies that fed into one main gully and at the bottom of the gully, was a large complex with a police station. It couldn't have been in a more dangerous spot. I saw a large concrete deflector above what looked like a generator or some kind of electrical building near the police station. We would have to get out of our vehicle and go in and sign in. I wasn't too keen to stop here but we had no choice.
Maolin didn't seem too concerned. I asked him if he thought there were avalanches in this area and he didn't think so. I wasn't so sure. When we got back into the vehicle after our checkpoint stop, I asked Maolin to ask the driver if there were any avalanches in this area as the driver knew the area better. He said yes. He said the original police station had had to be rebuilt as it had been taken out in a slide several years ago and several policemen had been killed in that slide, but don't worry, they had rebuilt it and now it was a lot stronger. That was the response to the avalanche hazard in that area. That was a real eye opener to me. I saw first hand the lack of experience in terms of avalanche know how. When they asked me in Hemu to go out into the field and help advise on whether or not the local power company should allow their workers to go out and start work on fixing the powerlines that had been taken out in a slide, there was no way I wanted anything to do with that. There was no way I was going to put myself at risk (as I know I would have been), so I had to decline their offer for me to go and help them out. It was obvious to me that it was still going to be too dangerous for any crew to go out in the (relative heat and subsequent instability) of the middle of the day, the prime time for avalanche activity.
So, with respect RNZ, I do have to disagree with your comment that "just because they may not ski a lot doesn't, in my mind, mean that they do not understand their snow pack. They have lived with it for centuries." Snow science, avalanche mitigation and everything that goes along with that, as I have pointed out, is still in it's absolute infancy in China. I'm talking about cat and heli-ski type operations that are dealing with snow in it's more natural state obviously. They are starting to open resorts in Xinjiang (we skied The General's Mountain in Aletai and then visited Silk Road Ski Resort just outside of Urumqi) and they have all the trappings of a regular ski resort. They have a lot of snow guns, grooming machines and the skier/boarder traffic to further compact and anchor the snow. I don't know if they have to do much control work (The General's Mountain does have obvious off-piste areas that look like they would slide under the right conditions, not sure about Silk Road as it was very foggy and we couldn't see much). That's obviously very different to what we have with the heli/cat skiing operations (as Tony C infers). You need a lot of understanding on how and why avalanches occur, not just where they occur, to run an off-piste orientated operation. Then you need the skilled people with the necessary experience and equipment, to run a program in this terrain. That will be a work in progress and I think with the right initial guidance to ensure that if the necessary skills/infrastructure are developed from the beginning and that the necessary safety standards are adhered to for the future, this can happen.
My other concern is about the weather in this area and the formation of the snowpack therefore. I was only exposed to the Aletai/Hemu zones for a limited period of time, so my on ground experience is very limited and I don't want to make generalizations without having the experience to back it up. My concern through my initial on-ground observations was that the snowpack was very weak (greatly faceted) in both areas. In Hemu (slightly later in the trip) it was even worse and you had the added concern of even steeper terrain. We saw a lot of avalanche activity in Hemu. As Tony C hypothesizes, this could be due to the prevailing weather patterns in the Aletai mountains; early snowfalls (predominant snowfalls in Dec/Jan perhaps) and then very cold, clear weather after that. We were there in March when it was warming up and I would hope that a snowpack might be starting to stabilize and the snowgrains in the snowpack turning from facets back to rounds or melt-freeze type grains with better bonding. We didn't see too much of that unfortunately. Again, as I wasn't there earlier in the season I don't know if the facets had grown in size or were getting smaller (potentially undergoing the rounding process). We certainly didn't look at temperature gradients in the snowpack to see if this was happening or not. Now this isn't really a concern if you are skiing mellower terrain and in Aletai, at the cat skiing operation, there's plenty of relatively low angle, fun terrain to be skiing. It's not Alaska, but it's a fun time and you are in a very wild and unique place. Will this area ever support steeper skiing, I don't know, it's too early to say. Maybe this season was an anomaly and that previous seasons have had better stability? Again, I don't know and there is not a lot of data to look back at and certainly not many local people with the understanding of the snowpack to make that assessment.
I have to admit that I was surprised to hear that the owners of the Aletai cat/heli operation were going to make a heavy investment in more helicopters (supposedly two!). I personally would be looking more at expanding the cat skiing operation, I think that might be more viable. If (and that's the big question here), if you can't ski steeper terrain then I'm not sure it's worth coming all the way out there for heli, I think the cat is a more financially appealing option, hence why I built a trip based around cat and snowmobile access. That's got some merit and it is a pretty special experience already. Now, I'm thinking long-term here, but hopefully in a couple of years time, they will have a roaming, caravan style cat skiing experience. We'll start at the main base camp area and each day, we'll head further north. The support team will move ahead of the cat and set up the yurts each night and then we will camp out. We'll keep pushing further north and keep skiing different areas. I think that could be an amazing experience, something completely unique and I am very excited for when we get to launch that trip. That's something I don't think you can do anywhere else, to my knowledge. That will be definitely worth going all the way to China for!
- Matt
