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The History Channel Original Podcast.
History This Week. January 15, 1939.
I'm Sally Helm. It's finally moving.
The first operational ski lift in the state of Utah.
It was supposed to open weeks ago, but there were problems with the pulleys and the motors and the brakes.
This lift is actually an old piece of mining equipment it used to transport silver ore.
But now, it's transporting skiers, paying 25 cents each to hop into a red metal chair and make their way up the mountain.
At this time, 1939, recreational skiing is just taking off.
And the town of Alta, Utah wants to be at its center.
Makes sense. The mining boom is over and the town needs a new industry in order to survive.
Plus, in a single season, they can get up to 900 inches of snow.
Today is opening day and things are going well.
A reporter writes, at 3 p .m., all was serene.
The nursery slope on the north side of the basin was crowded with skiers of all ages.
The Forest Service shelter was filled to capacity with parka -clad hot dog and hamburger seekers.
But then, just 10 minutes later, a storm moves in.
Blinding gusts of snow billow down the sides of this mountain.
The weather here can change on a dime.
And that heavy load of snow can become extremely dangerous.
And that is the way in which it makes no sense at all to put a ski resort right here in Alta, Utah.
It has long been known as one of the most dangerous places in this region, because it is right in the heart of avalanche country.
As of this moment, while the skiers grab their hamburgers, while the new red chairs swing beneath the lift, no one has been able to tame this threat.
But in order to harness the potential of this new growing industry, Alta is going to try.
Pulling out all the stops to control the immense, deadly force of the avalanche.
Today, pioneering winter safety in Utah.
How did the Alta ski area become the testing ground for all things avalanche control?
And how did rangers find their answer to the avalanche in a deadly weapon of war?
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We're going to start this story with a simple question.
What is an avalanche?
In the Wasatch Mountains outside Salt Lake City, the snowpack can be more than 240 inches thick.
Imagine it like a layer cake.
Each layer is snow from a different storm.
We heard about it from Craig Gordon, who's a forecaster for the U .S.
Forest Service's Utah Avalanche Center.
Storms come in with different amounts of wind and snow density or water content.
And each storm has its own individual characteristic and personality.
You have all these distinct layers or slabs on top of each other.
And those differences create the danger.
Some slabs will be weaker than others.
Once we start to develop this cohesive piece of snow on top of a weak layer, we know it's going to be game on.
That weak layer of snow is liable to shatter like a pane of glass.
That's called a slab avalanche.
Gordon said it's the kind that they're most worried about in Alta.
And it tends to come after a period that feels good, a little winter sun.
The longer period of time we go in between storms, the weaker that snow gets.
So we might really enjoy those sunny, cold days.
But the snowpack oftentimes doesn't feel our same emotion.
It might have been helpful for Alta's early residents to understand the emotions of the snowpack.
Alta is located in those Wasatch Mountains, in an area known as Little Cottonwood Canyon.
We talked to Andrea Huskinson, former communications manager for the Alta ski area.
She told us a little while after the gold rush in California, there was a silver rush out here in the Wasatch Mountains.
Miners from all over were drawn to the ore deposits near Alta.
So they came up here, started mining, and they stayed up here for the winter and didn't realize, like, it all comes down.
It all comes down. The mountain, that is.
They had a lot of natural avalanche slides, and then they couldn't get down the canyon.
You know, they ran out of food.
It was rough living conditions.
I'm glad I wasn't a miner.
Yeah, pretty often an avalanche would trap the miners and their families in the town of Alta.
Or worse. On February 13, 1885, an avalanche a mile long comes barreling down towards the town of Alta.
On its way, it creates hurricane -force winds, and when it arrives, it destroys more than half the town.
Residents desperately try to dig their family members out of the snow.
They manage to rescue nine people, but they also recover many bodies.
In all, 15 people are killed.
And this isn't the first time.
The year before, an avalanche had killed 12 people, including a little boy.
Between 1865 and 1915, it's estimated that up to 250 people were killed by avalanches.
Right after the big one in 1885, a newspaper publishes an article calling this the same old story.
It asks, rhetorically, why people are still living in Alta.
The answer, of course, is that they need to make a living, even if it puts them in mortal peril.
And so, after each avalanche, they mourn the dead and then try to put the town back together.
They'd have to rebuild, and so it was hard to live up here in those times.
I can't imagine living up here in those times.
This isn't to say that the people living in Alta were totally helpless against the snow.
Many of them were Scandinavian immigrants who knew how to handle themselves in extreme winter conditions.
And one of their solutions was, in fact, skiing.
I'm sure in the winter they got out and someone was like, oh, this might be fun to put two sticks on and ski down it.
Skiing was mostly for utilitarian purposes at this point, not recreation.
It's reported that mailmen in Alta would use some kind of skis to get around.
In 1884, there is a mention of a ski race, spelled S -K -E -E.
Some of the skis are much longer than they would be today, like 14 feet.
Others are short and stubby.
Many are homemade. But they work to get around and maybe provide a little entertainment.
But by the end of that decade, the 1880s, the mining economy goes bust.
There are a lot of reasons.
The surface deposits of silver ore have been run down.
The government takes silver dollars out of circulation.
So that means less demand.
The industry does eventually recover, but then it goes bust again.
And then again, this time helped along by the stock market crash of 1929.
As more miners leave Alta, the avalanches continue to destroy buildings.
Until, by the 1930s, it's basically a ghost town.
It does still have at least one intrepid resident, a man who loves it here.
He always calls the place Romantic Alta.
His name is George H.
Watson. He's living alone in a cabin, and he's so committed to the town that he elects himself mayor.
Wins by one vote. In other words, it's unanimous.
One winter, Watson is reading a magazine when he comes across an article about how skiing is becoming more popular around the U .S.
And he thinks that might be just what Alta needs.
He writes to about 200 ski resorts around the country to learn more.
And eventually, in 1937, he decides to donate 700 acres of land to the U .S.
National Forest Service to turn into a ski area.
Again, Craig Gordon.
The Forest Service is really keen on this.
And it's like we've got, I mean, hundreds of acres of public lands.
Why don't we utilize that?
The country is also still coming out of the Great Depression.
A brand -new industry might be just the thing the region needs to get back on track.
I'm sure somebody is thinking, wow, we could also maybe generate a little bit of revenue and help local economies.
So yeah, I mean, the ski industry, the seed for that is planted.
But don't forget that romantic Alta has long been known as the most avalanche -prone place in Utah.
Skiing can actually cause avalanches by helping to dislodge those big slabs.
Then skiers and the people below are in grave danger.
Jonathan Morgan is assistant director of the Alta Avalanche Program.
He said when they make this deal with Mayor George Watson, the government actually sees this threat coming.
And the U .S. Forest Service, they're one step ahead.
They know there's been a big avalanche problem here.
They know they're going to have their hands full.
So they hire Douglas Wadsworth, a U .S.
forest ranger, to be their first snow and avalanche observer.
He'll be in charge of protecting people from avalanches.
Really, no one had been positioned to a job like this before.
Certainly not through the United States government.
So, I mean, what a job for that individual to take on.
Wadsworth has weather observation instruments installed throughout Alta and begins analyzing years and years of data.
He also writes some rules, the first avalanche safety rules in North America.
They're not that deep.
They basically boil down to this.
If there's been a storm recently, stay away from avalanche -prone areas.
In the meantime, the quest to make Alta a ski capital continues.
In January of 1939, that new chairlift opens, and skiers flock to this beautiful, snowy destination.
And the following month, February of 1939, Douglas Wadsworth tries something new.
Something much more dramatic than writing a list of rules and regulations.
He was the first one to try to initiate an avalanche that we know of in North America for operational purposes with explosives.
Yes, explosives. Dynamite, to be exact.
See, Wadsworth has a theory that by using explosives, he can trigger an avalanche while people are out of harm's way.
That would kind of release the pressure so that an avalanche won't happen at a different time when more people are around.
He decides to put his theory to the test.
He and the then -ski school director went somewhere down toward the base of Mount Superior.
They picked the biggest thing they could find.
Mount Superior is one of the highest peaks in the area.
And they planted an unknown amount of explosives.
And set them off. and then minutes go by and uh no result wadsworth and the ski school director go home the theory seems to have failed until the next day a massive natural avalanche came down thousands of feet wide the trees were smashed apart like toothpicks if the two men had still been there they would have been instantly killed so i mean what a what a what a first try right there yeah wadsworth's experiments don't go much further.
But this experience suggests that he could be on to something.
His successor in the job, Sferi Engen, decides to focus on a non -dynamite approach.
Understandable. He mostly uses signage to mitigate avalanche risk, like area closed.
His form of mitigation was passive mitigation, letting it sit, letting the weak layers settle out.
That requires an incredible amount of patience.
I'm sure the skiers were just chomping at it a bit.
But these little signs do keep people safe.
In fact, the only fatality at Ulta at this point is because of a skier ignoring a danger sign.
Still, it is a pretty inefficient system.
Skiers have to wait for conditions to improve, sometimes for days.
So some people think there's got to be a better way, something more active, something we can actually do.
Sveri Engen retires in 1945 due to arthritis and is replaced by a man named Monty Atwater.
Atwater had just come out of military service in World War II.
And during the war, he had seen firsthand that the Swiss used mortars and bombs to trigger avalanches in the Alps.
He saw firsthand explosives being used to create avalanches.
And so that's really where the ball gets rolling.
Atwater's first experiment goes the same way as Wadsworth's.
Nothing happens. Not that day, and not the next day either.
And he figures out something counterintuitive.
Wadsworth had tried to trigger an avalanche during a relatively safe time.
But Monty Atwater realizes that's not the best way forward.
He quickly learns that you need to not detonate your explosive in the most convenient time, But you need to detonate your explosive when the avalanche hazard is highest.
For Atwater's second test, he goes to the top of Rustler Face, one of the most avalanche -prone slopes in Alta.
There, he plants 20 pounds of tetratyl, an explosive.
And from a short distance away, he sets it off with an electric detonator.
to see what happens he sticks his head up from behind the rock where he's hiding quote when the shock wave hit me i thought it had sliced my head off just above the eyes but he does what he set out to do he triggers an avalanche then skis down the slope behind it But the force of the blast shows just how risky this method is.
They knew that it was so dangerous.
They were like, we need to do this from a safe place.
So how do you set off an explosion from a safe distance?
With a really big gun.
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In 1949, the gun that Monty Atwater needs is sitting in a surprising place, the Utah State Capitol.
It's a French 75 howitzer, an artillery piece made famous during World War I.
Its only use right now is ceremonial salutes.
Atwater says, I have a better idea.
At this point, Monty Atwater has been the Alta snow ranger since 1945.
He's known for this practice of setting off explosives, hanging them from trees, burying them deep in the snow, all with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
He's a renegade. But his methods are working.
Again, Jonathan Morgan.
He has some good results.
But really, what he's looking for is he wants an artillery piece.
He wants to shoot from a safe distance and make avalanches at their time and place.
Atwater finally convinces his bosses at the U .S.
Forest Service to run an experiment.
The Utah National Guard brings that 75 -millimeter howitzer up from the capital.
And they're going to shoot it, not Atwater.
On March 30, 1949, the howitzer is in place, a safe distance from the mountain.
Atwater's there to watch, along with a flock of reporters.
He later writes that this annoyed him, having the press there.
But Jonathan Morgan thinks otherwise.
Monty knew how to, you know, work the wheels.
He knew how to get the right photographers and the right reporters up here and the right politicians.
Atwater tells the crowd not to expect much.
This is just a test.
He directs the National Guardsmen to their first target.
and another. Fifteen shots in total, and five avalanches come crashing down the Wasatch Mountains.
They had good avalanche results.
Everyone was pretty happy with what they saw.
As the Salt Lake Telegram reported, modern science went up Little Cottonwood Canyon Wednesday to help Mother Nature with her spring mountain cleaning.
This is a success. Controlled avalanches triggered from a safe distance, making the mountain safer for all those skiers.
Atwater estimates that to get the same results without the howitzer, it would have taken three days of hiking, manually planting charges.
Now, he's proved that this other system could work.
Even though it's kind of weird to have a huge military weapon become a major part of life at a ski resort.
The National Guard gets the idea but says, you can't use these guns yourself.
Atwater has to give them 24 hours notice.
But by the next winter, they agree to let him store the gun at Alta.
And by the third winter, they let him shoot the mountain all on his own.
Alta has revolutionized avalanche control.
As Atwater keeps evolving his methods, surrounding ski areas copy him and get their own guns.
At Alta, by the late 1960s, an average of 700 rounds of artillery are fired each year.
It's a practice that lasts for decades, allowing generations of skiers to enjoy the mountains safely.
Between 1950 and 1994, avalanche deaths in controlled ski areas in the U .S.
drop 87%. the event.
Craig Gordon was one of the gunners who helped make that happen.
It is the coldest job on the mountain.
You're standing on a gun mount, and the old school gun mounts were often exposed to weather and wind, and you're not moving around.
And the time that it takes to sight everything in with absolute precision and no ability to make any mistakes, knowing that if we overshot, that would be no espoeno.
Nobody would look kindly on that.
There is a misfire incident in 2005, not in Alta, it's in a city nearby.
A 105 millimeter artillery shell lands in the backyard of the Connors family.
The explosion blew out the windows of their house.
If their three -year -old hadn't been lying on the ground watching TV, he could have been killed.
And you know, and that's on every gunner's mind when they're dialing in that elevation.
Craig Gordon agrees.
It's not lost on him how dangerous these guns can be.
And he said, there's a weird kind of cognitive dissonance when you're shooting one of these massive guns in such a peaceful place.
This is a Korean War era piece of artillery.
And the brave people who do shoot these weapons during times of war do not have this luxury and this time.
And it really put me into a time and place.
This is something that was used at one time as a war piece, and now we're using it to keep the piece with a snowpack.
And it is really just kind of a mind -blowing juxtaposition of the use of a piece of military artillery.
Alta now hosts half a million skiers each season.
Skiing there is more popular than ever.
And a lot that that is due to those avalanche control efforts, which made it possible to do this sport without as much fear.
In 2023, Elta retired its howitzer.
The gun was on loan from the army, who wanted it back.
They were a great tool and the time has come to replace them with something else.
They've done their part and helped out.
But, you know, it's not the safest thing to do to fire an artillery piece.
Alta used a howitzer for 74 years.
But now in the modern world, avalanche control experts don't need a giant gun, though they do still need explosives.
They use what are called remote avalanche control systems to set off blasts from a safe distance away.
So Craig Gordon says, if you go up Little Cottonwood Canyon today, you're still likely to hear plenty of explosions.
Yeah, that's sort of mountain music around here.
You know, explosives go off and you know it's going to be a good day.
And you know the hardworking women and men of the ski patrol are out there knocking avalanches down and trying to make that safe and get that open for skiers.
Thanks for listening to History This Week, a Backpocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel.
To stay updated on all things history this week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast .com.
And if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweekathistory .com.
Special thanks to our guests, Craig Gordon, Avalanche Forecaster with the U .S.
Forest Service's Utah Avalanche Center, Andrea Huskinson, former Alta Ski Area Communication Manager, and Jonathan Morgan, Assistant Director of the Alta Avalanche Program.
This episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein.
It was also produced by me, Sally Helm.
For Backpocket Studios, our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fidler.
Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.
And we'll see you next week.
