Devastating Winter of 1981-82

BY MARK MCLAUGHLIN

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1982 slide path map. | Courtesy Alpine Meadows Ski Resort

After the record-breaking snowstorm in early January 1982 where Alpine Meadows ski area picked up 14.6 feet in the first 10 days of the month, the mountain recorded only a meagre 7 inches in February. In March, the weather segued into the typical pattern of occasional Pacific fronts separated by extended periods of fair weather. For most locations in California, March signifies the beginning of spring, but in the mountains the third month is usually a good snow producer. In fact, Donner Pass averages more than 15 days with measurable precipitation in March, greater than any other month. Throughout all four seasons the atmosphere attempts to equalize its arctic and equatorial temperature imbalance, but this battle is especially intense during springtime. After a long winter, most residents in the Tahoe Sierra look to spring with relish, ready for warm-weather outdoor activities such as fishing, bicycling, climbing or kayaking. Reflecting this seasonal optimism in the northern hemisphere is the oft-quoted idiom: “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.”

In 1982, however, a cold low-pressure trough in the eastern Pacific Ocean kept the atmosphere energized and at the end of March, a late-season and potent atmospheric river, driven by a strong, subtropical jet stream, surged toward California. The confluence of warm, moist air interacting with a cold air mass over the Tahoe Sierra was a recipe for disaster. On March 27, the first of several strong surges of Pacific moisture tore into the mountains. Blizzard conditions quickly developed in the higher elevations, with extraordinary snowfall throughout the Sierra. The first shot dumped nearly 13 feet of snow at Echo Summit in a week. At Twin Lakes, located in the high-country west of Bridgeport, 90 inches of snow fell in the first 48 hours, the second greatest two-day snowfall total in U.S. history. By April 1, 11 feet had fallen with more to come. In the Lake Tahoe region, the snowfall was overwhelming ski areas near the Sierra crest. Avalanche control personnel at then-Squaw Valley (Palisades Tahoe), Alpine Meadows and Kirkwood Mountain Resort kicked into high gear. Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows are among a handful of North American ski resorts classified at the highest level of avalanche risk.

Alpine has nearly 300 inbounds slide paths and annually records the largest number of avalanches of any ski area in the United States. Before the storm began, the consolidated snowpack at Alpine was about 14 feet deep on the upper slopes. During the first four days at least 80 inches of new snow piled up, even more in wind deposition zones. Southwesterly wind gusts in excess of 100 mph hammered the ridges and compressed the rapidly accumulating snow into a dense and unstable mass. The high wind hampered chairlift operations and severely limited ski patrol access to the mountain. In a desperate attempt to maintain control of the slopes above the resort, ski patrol tossed dynamite sticks at the lower slide-prone zones. Unable to reach the highest exposed ridges, avalanche control crews fired projectiles with a 75mm recoilless rifle located at Gunner’s Knob near the base area, as well as from a mobile 75-mm howitzer mounted on the back of a pickup truck. Avalanche control was required to protect ski runs and access to the main road, the base area and guest parking lot. The hand-thrown charges on the lower mountain were producing slides as expected, but the higher ridges being shelled with artillery were difficult to evaluate because of poor visibility. At this point the instability of the mountain snowpack on the upper slopes was extreme and highly dangerous.

Aware of the increasing danger, Alpine Meadow’s mountain manager Bernie Kingery shut down the resort’s upper chairlifts on Monday, March 29. The next day he ran only three lower lifts at the bottom of the mountain. Wednesday’s operations would hinge on the weather. Early Wednesday morning, on March 31, the monster storm was still raging relentlessly. Kingery’s ridge-top anemometers indicated sustained wind speeds between 60 and 100 mph; he estimated that snow was falling about 3 inches per hour. Another 17 inches of snow had fallen on the resort overnight. At 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Kingery and general manager Howard Carnell closed the ski area with only necessary personnel permitted at the mountain. The resort’s main lodge remained open for business. Word was sent out to the guests at the nearby Alpine Chalet condominiums to stay inside their buildings. Ski patrol performed routine avalanche control throughout the area and then most of them went home for the day. There was still a half dozen employees at the lodge, eight mechanics working in the garage and a small contingent helping Kingery coordinate snow-management operations. Bernie Kingery, 52, had more than 20 years of experience in the ski industry, with 17 of them at Alpine Meadows. A skier since the age 4, his first introduction to the business was at Squaw Valley during the 1960 Winter Olympics. He later worked as a professional ski patrol leader at Sugar Bowl and then joined the team at Alpine in 1964. A seasoned avalanche expert, Kingery once said that would-be snow slides were “like a stack of marbles ready to go.”

Kingery’s headquarters for control operations was in Base Room 4 on the bottom floor in the three-story, Summit Lift Terminal Building. The steel-girded, A-frame structure was located about 100 yards from the main lodge and was considered safe from any known avalanche path. In the late afternoon on March 31, huge slabs of snow along a fracture line about 3,000-feet long simultaneously broke free from the Poma Rocks, Buttress and Don’s Nose terrain. It’s a steep area 800 feet above the lodge and parking lot, but with no known history of destructive slides. Avalanche crews had shot that slope multiple times earlier in the day, but when nothing slid, they deemed it stable and safe to open the parking lot below. It would turn out to be a fatal miscalculation. Avalanche management is not an exact science and the snowpack that ski patrol declared stable released just eight hours later. The rapidly moving snow consolidated itself into a deadly wall hundreds of yards wide and up to 30 feet high as it came crashing down the slope toward the Alpine Meadows resort. Read Part III in the next edition or at TheTahoeWeekly.com.n

This article is an excerpt from Mark’s book, “Snowbound: Legendary Winters of the Tahoe Sierra.”