“Mild” winter lands mid-season wallop

Avalanche kills snowmobiler, traps two more

Rick Clayton, 37, of Ririe, Idaho, was helping other snowmobilers free their machines from deep, wet snow Friday when an avalanche released and swept him across a road into the Greys River.

Clayton was traveling with a group of 17 snowmobilers at the time of the accident. “They were about 30 miles from the parking lot at the southern end of Star Valley,” said Dennis Birch of the Star Valley Search and Rescue Team.

Rescuers found the body at about 11:30 p.m. under about four feet of snow at the river’s bank.

“We still don’t have a cause of death,” Birch said.

Two other avalanches that released about the same time buried another snowmobiler to the waist. A warm, moist current of air dumped at least 13 inches of snow in the mountains Thursday as winds gusting to 90 miles per hour formed traffic-halting snow drifts.

The storm caused the first weather-related closings of schools in eight years as all roads in and out of Jackson Hole were closed for several hours. Flights in and out of Jackson Hole Airport were delayed and the Jackson Hole Ski Resort closed due to 80-mph winds whipping Rendezvous Peak.

An American Airlines jet landing Thursday afternoon touched down 30 feet short of the runway, gouged a trench in the snow and broke a runway light.

Visibility was the major issue at the airport, manager George Larson said. Wind and blowing snow caused Continental Express to divert to Riverton, and Delta’s morning flight never came in.

Several private jets and one American flight landed in the afternoon, but Grand Teton National Park closed Highway 89 from Gros Ventre Junction to Moran, making travel into town difficult.

“They’re driving by Braille up here,” said Bill Swift, a park spokesman. Huge drifts made plowing in the park difficult and dangerous, he said.

On Teton Pass, commuter Tom Marcum and a co-worker were trapped between two avalanches for about 10 hours early Thursday.

“That was a little too close for comfort,” said Marcum, who commutes between Victor and Jackson.

About 30 similar snow slides – resulting from rising temperatures – severed numerous portions of the county roads in the past week.

Wyoming Transportation Department Engineer Ken Swedeen said the warm weather was the culprit. Rain and warm temperatures have put a lot of weight on “slabs” of snowpack around the valley, causing them to give way, Swedeen said.

“We’ve had a lot of wet-slab releases.”

Swedeen said the high number of slides for this time of year is uncommom.

This is the kind of activity that you usually see later on in March.”

With about 30 slides in the valley this week, Swedeen’s staff has been burning the midnight oil clearing roads.

“It’s been pretty much round the clock since Wednesday night,” Swedeen said.

He gave a rundown of this week’s avalanches, which forced roads to Victor, Alpine and Pinedale/Big Piney to close periodically.

Teton Pass: Twin slide and Glory Bowl ran Wednesday night-Thursday morning.

Marcum and Bob Coulter, employed by a Victor janitorial service, crossed the pass Wednesday night to clean the Wort Hotel’s bar, restaurant and kitchen.

“We came over at about 9, and it wasn’t too bad,’ Marcum said.

But the return trip, at about 1 a.m., nearly killed them.

“We went past Glory Bowl…then there was a white-out and we got to Twin Slide, which had gone. So we ran into it and got stuck.”

The pair shoveled themselves out, turned back toward Jackson and found another avalanche had fallen – Glory Bowl.

At about 4 a.m., highway officials discovered the men but couldn’t free them. The snowplow couldn’t get through the avalanche and the rotary plow – which cuts through slides with spinning blades – was being used in the Snake River Canyon, Marcum said.

Finally, at about 11 a.m., the highway department carried them away in a snowcat.

“The highway department guys said we were probably in the best place,” Marcum said. “To be between them – we were lucky that way I guess”.