Imagine boots on snow for 12 months a year. From the towering peaks of Denali and Rainier, to the powder-filled backcountry of Utah's Wasatch Range, that's the life of Nikki Champion. It's a long way from the young girl who was chasing gates as a ski racer in Michigan. Today, she's a vital link in helping keep Utah's backcountry safe as a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center.
As her name implies, Nikki truly championed her own path–moving from Michigan to Colorado to attend college and quickly discovering her passion for snow. She learned about snow science, taking her zest of knowledge to Montana. Seeking mentors for her burgeoning career, she headed for Alaska. Today she summers in Alaska and Washington state as a mountain climbing guide but spends winters here in Utah where she's up and at work by 3:00-4:00 a.m. on every forecast shift.
RESOURCES
Utah Avalanche Center
utahavalanchecenter.org
Know Before You Go Online Education
kbyg.org
Utah Avalanche Awareness Week - Dec. 6-12
Watch for daily on-snow and online classes.
utahavalanchecenter.org/education/uac-kbyg-classes
CHATTING WITH NIKKI CHAMPION
Nikki, you returned to Utah in October and quickly found people heading to the backcountry. Is it looking like a busy season?
It sure seems like it. I've been out three days so far this year, and almost every single day the outer parking lot looks like the lifts are running. And we had a record showing at USAW (Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop) - close to a thousand people for each open night which is awesome.
Before we get to skiing, how did you find your way into mountain guiding?
I'm going on my sixth season with RMI. I used to work up in Alaska as a guide up there doing some ice climbing, glacier travel, things like that. And seven years ago I came down to the lower 48 and I climbed Mount Rainier for the first time. And while I was there, I saw all the guides climbing and I was like, 'that looks pretty fun, I think I could do that.' So the next season, I applied and I got the gig. I've entered the rotation in which I spend every May through October climbing primarily in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. So our normal rotation looks like a May on Rainier, a June on Denali, July and August back on Rainier and in the North Cascades and then off in September doing a lot of North Cascades work until I wrap up and head back to Utah.
In Nikki Champion's year, how many months are you touching snow?
Oh, gosh, probably 12 months a year. Sometimes I try to take October off and warm up. Previously I would try to kind of take some time off and go somewhere tropical and only wear sandals for a month or so, give my feet a break from the ski boots and the mountaineering boots. But somehow snow still seems to sneak into every month of my life.
Was the summer climbing impacted by COVID?
Yeah, the guiding industry seemed to be hit pretty hard by COVID this year. The whole climbing season got canceled on Denali for guide services as well as public climbers. So we were unable to do a season up there and I was actually unable to climb on Rainier until September this year. So a much different summer for me.
As a young girl, how did your life on snow begin?
I was pretty fortunate. I was actually born in Colorado, in between Denver and Steamboat. My parents got me on the skis when I was about like one and a half or two. They had me skiing with like a hula hoop out front of them so I could hold onto it. So I started skiing really young, which I thank my parents for. We moved to Michigan when I was about four, so pretty young. I began alpine racing really young as well, which took me all over the state of Michigan and out west as well to train. So it kind of came as no surprise to anyone that when I started looking at colleges when I was 18, I was looking for something out west, ideally Colorado or Montana - somewhere that had the mountains.
You learned snow science during college in Colorado and Montana, what led you to Alaska?
I kind of finally stumbled into finding out how that snow science was what I wanted to pursue. I started teaching avalanche classes in Montana. I began doing my own research outside of just helping field assistants. And I started working in the Sub-Zero Science and Engineering Lab in Bozeman, which is like a cold lab where you get to create snow. After I actually graduated, I wanted to start exploring more options for forecasting and even more seeking out new mentorship opportunities. The Chugach was a really unique situation in which it had three female forecasters, it was the only forecast center in the country that had that. So I wanted to go up to the Chugach. I was fortunate enough to land the internship up there.
Did that experience introduce you to new things that you hadn't encountered down in the lower 48?
It was new opportunities. I hadn't worked directly with the Forest Service on the forecasting side of things before. I had worked primarily as an avalanche educator with the Forest Service Avalanche Center as well. It was a new type of snowpack. So the Chugach, up in Alaska, is in Girdwood, an hour outside of Anchorage. It's a really unique snow climate in which it can represent all three of what we've identified as snow climates: the inner mountain, which is what we are here in Utah, Continental, which is more of what you think of Colorado, and then a coastal snow climate, which is traditionally Washington. The Chugach, year-to-year, has represented all three. So I was able to see a lot more rain than I'd ever seen before down in Montana and or in Utah or Colorado, as well as different problems like glide avalanches, and also just not seeing as much sun - that plays an impact on the snow.
What is snow science?
Snow science is a really fickle science, and something we're continuing to learn about every single day. The basics of what builds an avalanche, though, is you have a slab or a really strong layer over a weak layer on a bed surface that it can slide on. And then you need a slope steeper than 30 degrees.
What's the difference between skiing in a resort and the backcountry?
Ski resorts do an awesome job at mitigating the risk. What they do is they more or less create their own snowpack. So these layers that I just talked about, that slab and that weak layer, they use explosives, they use ski cutting, they use a multitude of different techniques to really destroy or test those weak layers and they create an artificial snowpack. They make sure that that weak layer or that whole setup doesn't exist within their ski resort. Now, as soon as you step outside a gate, you enter the backcountry from a trailhead. It's all the same. It's a natural snowpack. And at that point, there's none of that control. There's no explosive work testing the snow. There's no explosive work destroying that. We claim it's all just a natural raw snowpack. And you more than likely do have that make up of a slab and a weak layer.
As soon as you leave the gate, you are no longer in the ski resort and you need to think of it as the backcountry. There's not really anything known as the side country. As soon as you leave the gate, you're in the backcountry. It's the exact same as leaving a trailhead.
What do we look for in the daily avalanche forecast?
Right away, you're going to see our danger rose, which has these danger ratings assigned to the different aspects and elevations of the Wasatch. That, right away, is going to give you a really simple breakdown of the dangers at those different aspects of elevations in a very visual way. Going with the danger rose, is just our bottom line statement. It's normally a couple of sentences that are just going to break it down, really simply on what the avalanche danger is, why and where from there it's really important to continue reading through the rest of the forecast.
Can backcountry users contribute to your reports?
Yeah, so we get observations directly from users. Anybody can go to utahavalanchecenter.org click on our surveillance tab and they can view all the observations from the public. But they can also submit an observation themselves from just a general day in the field. Or they can submit if they do have avalanche incident and we rely super heavily on those. We don't have enough forecasters to get to every zone, every single day. So the user observations really help us paint a full picture of the Wasatch.
How has mentorship played a role for your career?
I've been really fortunate along my whole path to have some really great mentors, both male and female. I just fell into my own personal progression. I had to actively seek out female mentors a lot more. They were harder to find. And that's why I wanted to go up to Alaska and work with all the women up there. When I got down to Utah and I took the position down here, the woman who was in this position before me, Evelyn, had started an all female women's avalanche education program. And I think that's huge for the reasons I just discussed. I think that by introducing more female-specific education, it creates more opportunities for women to see other women in leadership positions, in educator positions, in forecaster positions, and then also create more mentor-mentee relationships.
Do you embrace the mentor role yourself today?
Women's education is a first huge stepping stone this year. We went from about three women's-specific education to seven courses we're doing this year. And I'm involved with all of those as well. I would like to see more women enter these entry level avalanche education courses, maybe feel more confident to then continue their own avalanche path, start taking some of the farther along avalanche education courses, and then maybe pursue a career in avalanche or snow science.
So, I've got my backcountry gear … what's next?
The first step is getting the gear that doesn't only include gear to travel uphill, but that includes avalanche rescue gear as well. So your beacon, shovel, probe, all three are essential pieces. You can't use one without the other. After that, you need to get the training. And this is a really unique year because there's a lot of resources available for people. We had an e-learning module go live on Know Before You Go, which is an online learning module that you can work through from the comfort of your own home. Beyond that, I think getting on the snow is really important. The first stepping stone for that could be just in a backcountry one-on-one, which is an evening lecture. This year it's going to be in a more hybrid form. We're going to have just all your classes and lectures recorded, and then we're going to do a Zoom question and answer with your instructor. And then a day on the field. There's avalanche education that goes beyond that, like an avalanche Level One, which is a three-day course with a snow component.
What do we tell our friends who are going into the backcountry without the gear or the training?
It's a hard topic, but it is so important. It's almost a little bit morbid when you go into the backcountry with somebody if they don't have the proper training, they don't know how to use their gear. They're telling all their partners that they don't really care about their life, which is a hard way to put it, but it's true. You want to go into the backcountry with somebody who knows how to do a rescue and you want to make sure that you know how to do a rescue. To have the education, to have the training and to know how to use all your gear is is telling all your partners that you care about them and you care that they live.
As a forecaster, you spend a lot of time in the backcountry where you have your choice of almost infinite lines. What does that perfect line look like for you?
Sometimes when we ski for work every day, it's not always powder. So I think just looking for the best line of the day, whether that be a really high snow day or the avalanche danger is high. So it might just be some low angle wiggles or maybe the best line to get out of steeping or skiing bulletproof ice as fast as you can. I think just looking for whatever is going to cause me to have the most fun that day on the way down is what I look for.
Listen in to Ski Utah's Last Chair episode with Nikki Champion to learn more:
How one of her favorite beers can keep you safe in the backcountry.
Her go-to snowy winter evening dinner at home (she's also a skilled chef).
The line she loves (or more like a region) for that perfect ski day.
And the circumstances under which she still prefers groomers over powder.
Tune in to Last Chair: The Ski Utah Podcast presented by High West Distillery and Saloon on your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to get first access to every episode.
Transcript S2 Ep3 - Nikki Champion
Tom Kelly: |00:00:00| Joining me now is avalanche forecaster, Nikki Champion, coming to us from Salt Lake City today. Nikki, welcome to Last Chair, presented by High West.
Nikki Champion: |00:00:09| Hey, Tom, thanks for having me.
Tom Kelly: |00:00:11| So what have you been up to? I know you just moved back down to Salt Lake City for the winter and you're greeted with all of this new snow.
Nikki Champion: |00:00:19| Yeah, I got back probably early mid October. Early season we just do a lot of kind of organising our education, getting things laid out for what we expect is going to be a pretty busy winter. So we had USAW the first week of November and now we're kind of starting to roll into forecasting.
Tom Kelly: |00:00:37| And what is USAW?
Nikki Champion: |00:00:39| USAW is the Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop. We run both a pro session that has talks and presentations directed towards professional users, and then we ran three open sessions or three open nights to have talks and presentations of different themes that are directed just towards all backcountry users.
Tom Kelly: |00:00:59| Now, I know that you're very professional in that, but are people getting, like, really pumped up for the ski season this year?
Nikki Champion: |00:01:06| It sure seems like it. I've been out three days so far this year, and almost every single day the outer parking lot looks like the lifts are running. And we had a record showing at USAW - close to a thousand people for each open night which is awesome.
Tom Kelly: |00:01:23| Well, we're going to talk more about skiing and your role with the Utah Avalanche Center, but first, I want to go to what you do in the summertime. And it's amazing to me. And I know there's there's a number of people who do a routine like this climbing and guiding in the summertime and then get on snow in the winter. But you've now worked up at Mt. Rainier for a few years. And how did you make your way up there? And what is your role as a mountain guide for RMI?
Nikki Champion: |00:01:49| Yes, I'm going on my sixth season with RMI. I used to work up in Alaska seven years ago, I worked as a guide up there doing some ice climbing, glacier travel, things like that. And seven years ago is the first time I came down to the lower 48 and I climbed Mount Rainier for the first time. And while I was there, I saw all the guides climbing and I was like, that looks pretty fun. I think I could do that. So the next season I. Applied and I got the gig and yes, and I've entered the rotation in which I spend every May through October climbing primarily in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. So our normal rotation looks like a May on Rainier, a June on Denali, July and August back on Rainier and in the North Cascades and then off in September doing a lot of North Cascades work until I wrap up and head back to Utah.
Tom Kelly: |00:02:46| To give people a sense of what this is like, how much of that is actually on snow in the summertime and how much of it is just bare rock?
Nikki Champion: |00:02:53| It's almost, well, it depends what mountain I'm climbing, I do a lot of primarily snow and glacier travel guiding. So Rainier's almost all snow. There's about a thousand feet of rock at the end of the season, but it's third, fourth class. You're walking it using your hands occasionally. Denali is all snow from the second you get off the airplane and you land on the glacier, you don't see any rock or land for the next twenty one days. The North Cascades., what I do in later season, that does have a little bit more rock, but still probably only a third.
Tom Kelly: |00:03:31| In Nikki Champion's year, how many months are you touching snow?
Nikki Champion: |00:03:37| Oh, gosh, probably 12 months a year,
Tom Kelly: |00:03:40| That's amazing.
Nikki Champion: |00:03:41| Sometimes I try to take October off and warm up, and previously I would try to kind of take some time off and go somewhere tropical and only wear sandals for a month or so, give my feet a break from the ski boots and the mountaineering boots. But somehow snow still seems to sneak into every month of my life.
Tom Kelly: |00:04:01| We're going to talk about COVID as it relates to the backcountry, but just wondering, how did the pandemic impact your guiding programs this past summer?
Nikki Champion: |00:04:10| Yeah, the guiding industry seemed to be hit pretty hard by COVID this year, like I said, normally I head over to Washington and may do a month. They're climbing and getting acclimated, getting all my systems back into place. And then June, I head up to Alaska and do a Denali every time of year. Then this year, the whole climbing season got canceled on Denali for guide services as well as public climbers. So we were unable to do a season up there and I was actually unable to climb on Rainier until September this year. So a much different summer for me.
Tom Kelly: |00:04:49| I'm sure the guide services had protocols in place, would be a distancing masks or whatever. Did that make it any more difficult in conducting those programs?
Nikki Champion: |00:05:04| When we did actually start running programs late season, we ran a lot lower ratios, so about two clients to one guide versus our normal three clients to one guide. We put every client in their own tent when it came to social distancing and wearing masks. Luckily, we already do that. When you're traveling on a rope team, you're about 30 feet away from somebody already. And most of us are wearing buff's and gloves in the alpine. For some of the lower altitude, things like that down at base camp and learning our skills. We did have to wear masks and be more socially distant, but it was pretty easy to implement. We just had lower numbers.
Tom Kelly: |00:05:44| One of the side benefits, not only do you have the middle seat blocked on airplanes, but you get a private tent now on guiding adventures, right?
Nikki Champion: |00:05:52| Yeah, you know, it was kind of hard to deal with all the sudden we went from we normally put all of our clients in a public shelter, which is like a permanent structure at camp. Now, all of a sudden, we had 12 tents we had to maintain in. These are little one person tents. These are big Denali, like three person tents. And so this year, one of my programs, we had these 12 tents up on the Mirror Ridge, which is the camp on Mount Rainier. It's notorious for being terribly windy. And so we were starting to climb around one a.m. and one of my co-workers walks over to me and he's like, we just lost a tent. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, a tent just blew off the ridge. And this was like five minutes before we're supposed to start climbing Mount Rainier and the added maintenance of 12 tents made things a little bit hard. And we we had some tents blow off Mt. Rainier.
Tom Kelly: |00:06:43| Well, the stories that come out of these challenges now, Nikki, you have a really adventurous life. I mean, you're on snow 11, 12 months a year. It started all in Michigan, of all places. And how did you get into skiing to start with and find this sense of adventure in Michigan?
Nikki Champion: |00:07:01| Yes, so I was pretty fortunate I was actually born back in Colorado, in the Denver, in between Denver and Steamboat. My parents got me on the skis when I was about like one and a half or two. They had me like skiing with, like a hula hoop out front of them so I could hold onto it. So I started skiing really young, which I think my parents for. And then I, I began alpine racing really young as well, which drove me all over the state of Michigan and out west as well to train. So it kind of came as no surprise to anyone that when I started looking at colleges when I was 18, I was looking for somebody out west, ideally Colorado or Montana, somewhere that had the mountains.
Tom Kelly: |00:07:46| Did you have or actually what age were you when you moved to Michigan from Colorado?
Nikki Champion: |00:07:51| I think I was about four, so I was pretty young, but I had begun skiing already.
Tom Kelly: |00:07:57| But you had those memories of mountains still in your mind.
Nikki Champion: |00:08:01| I don't know if I actually had memories or if it was just kind of ingrained at that point.
Tom Kelly: |00:08:06| Now, I know you raced all over the Midwest and out West as well, your home mountain was Timber Ridge in Michigan and give people a sense of what the ski areas are like. And by the way, I'm from Wisconsin, so I know I know the routine skiing is just as much fun back there, but it's different. Give us a little sense of what the hills were like back there.
Nikki Champion: |00:08:25| Yeah, so the hill I grew up racing on maybe had maybe had three hundred vertical feet, there was a partial lift that still existed as well as just true tow ropes. And then the race Hill had just two doubles that ran side by side, and then there was a triple somewhere else on the hill, and that was it. You had your one black diamond. You're like three blue runs and then kind of the scatter of green throughout.
Tom Kelly: |00:08:57| And not much avalanche danger. Back there, was there?
Nikki Champion: |00:09:00| Yeah, not much avalanche danger or more like danger of blue ice are getting smoked by somebody for the first time.
Tom Kelly: |00:09:09| Yeah, but you know, those hard packed conditions, man, they make a good skier out of you, don't they?
Nikki Champion: |00:09:14| They yeah, they've lingered. I know how to turn.
Tom Kelly: |00:09:17| So so the mountains were calling you and beckoning you to come back. How did you make that transition from Michigan to get back out to the Rocky Mountains?
Nikki Champion: |00:09:28| Yeah, so I like I said, I kind of knew when I was looking at colleges that I wanted to be somewhere out west and I knew I was trying to go to school for engineering. So I ended up picking a school that had both. I went to Colorado School of Mines in Golden, which was right in the foothills outside the Denver area. It seemed like the logical choice to allow me to pursue engineering as well as get to play in the mountains.
Tom Kelly: |00:09:53| So what were you thinking of doing with your engineering degree?
Nikki Champion: |00:09:57| Well, initially, I wanted to do an environmental engineering degree, just pure engineering. I went to mines because they had what was called a humanitarian engineering program. So you focused on helping developing nations with their engineering infrastructure.
Tom Kelly: |00:10:12| Somewhere along the line, like a lot of people go to school in Colorado or in Utah, you started to find that skiing was a pretty cool thing, huh?
Nikki Champion: |00:10:21| Yeah, so when I got to Colorado School of Mines, I needed a work study and I landed at the outdoor recreation center of the school. It seemed like a logical choice. They did everything I enjoyed. They spent time outside, they climbed, and more importantly, they introduced me to backcountry skiing. So it was my freshman year. I took my first avalanche course and then began helping shadow some really introductory backcountry skiing trips, like going to a hot trip that didn't really have any avalanche terrain, but started helping people travel through avalanche terrain. And I had a mentor there who was a civil engineer and was really into snow science. So I started spending a little bit of time with him there and in snow pits and seeing how snow science was closely related to engineering.
Tom Kelly: |00:11:12| Yeah, I remember when I was a little kid in Wisconsin, we would that's when we got a lot of snow, but we would dig pits and we would dig and build these igloos. Not really thinking of, you know, the science aspect of it. But when you're out there and digging a snow pit for avalanche forecasting, it's quite a different science, isn't it?
Nikki Champion: |00:11:32| It is, yeah, you're a little bit more observant of what's actually happening versus just move in the snow.
Tom Kelly: |00:11:38| So you moved from Colorado up to Montana and then things really started to move for you in snow science and avalanche safety.
Nikki Champion: |00:11:48| Yeah, so I did a couple of years at Colorado School of Mines. It wasn't a great fit for me at the time, so I ended up transferring up to Montana State is my first semester there. I, I take taken my avalanche level 2 by that point. So when I got to Montana, I was connected with a grad student who was just looking for field assistance, people who had some pretty basic snow science understanding, but people who just want to get out in the snow and learn some more. So I started spending time with him, dug so many snow pits, just digging holes for him. And he was doing some propagation saw. Research, and that's how I initially got connected with the snow science community there.
Tom Kelly: |00:12:32| For those who don't know, talk a little bit more about the propagations research.
Nikki Champion: |00:12:38| Yes, so the propagation test is just another we call them stability tests in the snow science world. It's just a test that you're doing on the snow to test the stability of the snow pack. You're seeing if that slab on top of that weak layer does propagate.
Tom Kelly: |00:12:55| And how do you mean propagate?
Nikki Champion: |00:12:57| So probably when it collapses instead of just collapsing, like when you're standing on top of the snow and you feel it collapse beneath you, it actually cracks in a plane or motion and it shoots out and causes a fracture in the entire block that you've isolated, which is kind of what causes avalanches in general, if you're just getting a collapse in the snow pack, it's concerning. But when you get it to collapse and then continue to propagate out, that's when you can see those. Really notable avalanches in films and such where it shoots out from people's feet.
Tom Kelly: |00:13:36| Had you at this point experienced avalanches yourself, had you been in one or been on an outing where one occurred so you had a firsthand knowledge of it?
Nikki Champion: |00:13:45| At that point, I had not and luckily enough, I have still never been in an avalanche myself.
Tom Kelly: |00:13:51| That's a really good thing.
Nikki Champion: |00:13:52| Yeah, I'm going to try to keep it that way.
Tom Kelly: |00:13:55| So this eventually led you up to Alaska and, you know, what was the motivation, you know, finding new opportunities, different mountains? What was the incentive for you to start to move around to different places?
Nikki Champion: |00:14:08| Yeah, so after I worked with a grad student, I kind of finally stumbled into finding out how that's no signs of something that I wanted to further pursue. I started teaching avalanched classes down in Montana. I began doing my own research outside of just helping field assistants. And I started working in the Sub-Zero Science and Engineering Lab in Bozeman as well, which is like a cold lab that you get to create snow. And I did that post graduation. But after I actually graduated, I wanted to start exploring more options for forecasting and. Even more seeking out new mentorship opportunities and the Chugach was a really unique situation in which it had three female forecasters, it was the only forecast center in the country that had that. So I wanted to go up to the Chugach. I was fortunate enough to land the internship up there. So I headed up there.
Tom Kelly: |00:15:05| Did that experience introduce you to new things that you hadn't encountered down in the lower 48?
Nikki Champion: |00:15:11| Yeah, it had one. It was new opportunities, it was a new I hadn't worked directly with a forest service on the forecasting side of things before. I had worked primarily as an avalanche educator with the Forest Service Avalanche Center as well. It was it was a new type of snow pack. So the Chugach up in Alaska, that's in Girdwood, an hour outside of Anchorage. For those who don't know, it's a really unique snow climate in which it can represent. All three of what we've identified as snow climbed, so the inner mountain, which is what we are here in Utah, Continental, which is more kind of what you think of Colorado and then a coastal snow climate, which is traditionally Washington and the Chugach year-to-year has represented all three. So I was able to see a lot more rain than I'd ever seen before. Down in Montana and or in Utah or Colorado, as well as different problems like glide avalanches and also just not seeing as much sun that plays have an impact on the snow.
Tom Kelly: |00:16:19| We're with Nikki Champion from the Utah Avalanche Center on Ski, Utah's Chair, presented by High West. We'll be right back after this short break.
|00:16:41| Welcome back to Last Chair the Ski Utah podcast presented by High West. NikKi Champion, thanks for joining us here today. I want to talk a little bit more about snow science. And as a skier and I think I'm like a lot of skiers and snowboarders out there, we love to go out, get in the powder, get that snow, particularly here in Utah that's just blowing up over our hips and into our faces. And probably the last thing that we think about when we're going down those runs is science. But for us to be safe, we really do need to know about the science of snow and how it sticks together, how it breaks apart. Can you give us just a little introduction to what snow science is about? And and some of the things I know in the short podcast, we're not going to cover them all, but just give us a little introduction to get people to think a little bit differently about the science that binds these snowflakes together.
Nikki Champion: |00:17:33| Yes, no sciences is a really fickle science, and we're something we're continuing to learn about, it feels like every single day. The basics of what builds an avalanche, though, is you have. A slab or a really strong layer over a weak layer on some side of bed surface that it can slide on and then you need a slope steeper than 30 degrees. So to break that all down into kind of layman's terms, a slab or a really firm layer, that can be a lot of things that can be a ton of new snow that came in really warm or wet. That can be when the winds are really high, where it's blowing it around and it's creating that really firm snow that we've all seen. If you've been to a ski resort on a windy day, that can also just be a recently soula introduced layer that has become firm because of the sun and increased temperatures a week later. That often is known as it often is a faceted layer and what a faceted layer is, it's a layer of angular snow grains that sounds confusing on paper, but we've all seen these angular snow grains. It's when you try to make a snowball and they won't bind together at all. Those are angular snow grains. How those form is a big temperature gradient on a shallow amount of snow or really, really cold temperatures and not much snow that will drive fascinating or cause the snow to become weak.
Nikki Champion: |00:19:06| Other things that can be these weak layers underneath the slab could be graupel. You know, when you get all those little tiny pellets that look more like little round boobies than they do those beautiful snowflakes are stellars that we see. It can also be surface whore, which is just frozen frost. When you go out and you see those really beautiful feathers on the snow surface, that layer can get buried and become a weak layer. Or it could just be a density change, which means when the snow comes in really cold, it's light and fluffy and then it gets warmer throughout the storm. So you end up having that warm, wet snow on top of that light, low density snow. And then I said it needs to be on a bad surface. That can just be more snow. That can be the ground, that can be an ice layer. And then you need a slope angle steeper than 30 degrees. So if you're on a train that's less than 30 degrees, you're not an avalanche terrain at all. So you can kind of forget about all of the snow science and just enjoy your day every day of the year. But if you're on a slope steeper than 30 degrees, you do need to think a little bit about this make up of an avalanche.
Tom Kelly: |00:20:14| Nikki, I want to talk a little, do a pick up point there. Nikki, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between skiing in a resort and skiing outside of a resort. And I know, like many, you're at a resort, you're at Alta, Snowbird or Powder Mountain, wherever it might be, and you're anxious to get into that new powder, that fresh stuff. It's right there. Why can't we ski it? Patrols do an amazing job at mitigating those risks. So can you first talk about what happens in bounds that resorts to mitigate the avalanche challenges and then we'll move on to outside of the resorts?
Nikki Champion: |00:20:52| Ski resorts do an awesome job at mitigating the risk, and what they do is they more or less create their own snow pack. So these layers that I just talked about, that slab and that weak layer, they use explosives, they use ski cutting. They use a multitude of different. Techniques to really destroy or test those weak layers and they create an artificial snow pack, they make sure that that weak layer or that whole setup doesn't exist within their ski resort. Now, as soon as you step outside a gate, you enter the backcountry from a trailhead. It's all the same. It's a natural snow pack. And at that point, there's none of that control. There's no explosive works testing the snow. There's no explosive work destroying that. We claim it's all just a natural raw snow pack. And you more than likely do have that make up of a slab and a week later.
Tom Kelly: |00:21:49| So when we're out skiing at the resorts and we're up on the top of 99, 90 or up at the top of Solitude or at and Snowbird and there's a gate, we need to think differently, don't we?
Nikki Champion: |00:22:02| Yeah, as soon as you leave the gate, you are no longer in the ski resort and you need to think of it as the backcountry. There's not really anything known as the side country. As soon as you leave the gate, you're in the backcountry. It's the exact same as leaving a trail head.
Tom Kelly: |00:22:19| So I want to get a little more sense of what you do as a forecaster, and I know that some of your days are spent in the office calculating out forecasts and some are spent in the field. Let's talk about a day in the office where you're building a forecast and and the timeframes involved and what services ultimately you at Utah Avalanche Center are offering to the skiers and riders here in Utah.
Nikki Champion: |00:22:42| Yes, so my normal forecasting day. Normally looks like us going into the National Weather Service around 4:00 a.m. in the morning, between four and five a.m., you're looking at every weather station for your forecast region. So for me, that's Salt Lake, Provo and the Ogden area mountains. I also am fortunate enough to be able to talk to the meteorologists at the National Weather Service and pick their brain if there's something really interesting happening or get an idea of the actual totals and what that's going to look like for the Wasatch. At 5:00 a.m., we record our dawn patrol hotline, which is for everybody that's heading out before work. It's not going to be a full forecast, but it is going to give people a general idea of what to look for that day, what weather looks like, and any pertinent recent avalanches, things along those lines as well as closures. We want to keep people in the loop for that. We also, around that time communicate with the ski resorts and guide services, see what and dot and see what's going on in their end early in the morning because they're also up doing a very similar forecast for their region. And it's it's really helps to pick their brains.
Nikki Champion: |00:23:50| And then between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., we spend that time just writing. So we're writing three full products, trying to assign a danger rating as well as the problems, the wind loading, the new snow, persistent weekly or whatever the avalanche problem is for the day and assign a danger rating and put out a bottom line statement and get that all published by 7:00 a.m. Once we push publish, we send out a email to everybody who subscribed to our email list, which makes it a really convenient part of people's morning that they can just get that email right in their inbox, get the forecast right there. They don't even have to go to our website. And then at seven a.m., we also record a second hotline for all three regions, which is a full reading of our forecast. So if people prefer to listen to it while they're either driving to the canyons or driving to work, they can do that. At 3:00, we talk to Qumu and do a quick blurb on what the avalanche forecast looks like for the day. And then around 8:00, when we can finally take a deep breath for the morning.
Tom Kelly: |00:24:54| Do you have breakfast in there anywhere.
Nikki Champion: |00:24:55| Oh, not really. Some people do I do a lot of beverages at that time, I do like tea and coffee and water and by 8:00 I'm probably drinking a sparkling water as well. So I normally grab coffee or breakfast once I wrap up all my forecasting. I'm not that hungry at 3:00 a.m..
Tom Kelly: |00:25:15| For those of us grabbing a forecast in the morning, what are some of the simple things we need to look for if we're using the mobile app or going to the website or looking at your email, what are some simple tools we can look at in that forecast?
Nikki Champion: |00:25:25| So right away, you're going to see our danger rose, which has these danger ratings that I just talked about, assigned to the different aspects and elevations of the Wasatch, that right away is going to give you a really simple breakdown of the dangers at those different aspects of elevations in a very visual way. Going with the danger rose, is just our bottom line statement. It's normally a couple of sentences that are just going to break it down, really simply on what the avalanche danger is, why and where from there it's really important to continue reading through the rest of the forecast, I think, to more really valuable sections before we get to the actual avalanche problems is looking at the weather and looking at recent avalanche activity, because I think both of those paint a pretty valuable story about either what's going to happen in the mountains or what is happening in the mountains.
Tom Kelly: |00:26:17| Nikki, how do you learn about the avalanche activity? Are you getting user reports from the backcountry?
Nikki Champion: |00:26:23| Yeah, so we get observations directly from users. Anybody can go to UtahAvalancheCenter.org, click on our surveillance tab and they can view all the observations from the public, but they can also submit an observation themself from just a general day in the field. Or they can submit if they do have avalanche incident and we rely super heavily on those, we don't have enough forecasters to get to every zone, every single day. So the user observations really help us paint a full picture of the Wasatch.
Tom Kelly: |00:26:55| Nikki, that's the work that's done when you're in the office, but now let's go out on the field when you're doing a field day. What are some of the activities that are taking place?
Nikki Champion: |00:27:04| So even before I can go into the office and write that forecast, what's more important is what happens in the field and what we see in the field, because we have our own personal observations on top of the user observations. So most of us try to get into the field three or so days and then we're forecasting, say, two. And what we're looking for on those field days is we try to go somewhere that either one of our forecasters hasn't been recently. There haven't been many observations from somewhere that we think there could be like an outlier issue or somewhere that there's been a recent avalanche when we're in the field, depending on the reason we went, we're digging some of those snow pits, doing some of those stability tests to see the stability of the snow. And if there was a recent avalanche, we're trying to go look at the crown to kind of get an idea of why it happened, what later it happened on and if it could happen again.
Tom Kelly: |00:27:54| Nikki, you made a decision along the way to go to Alaska, in part because there were some female forecasters up there. How important has that been for you as a woman in the forecasting field to have mentors like that?
Nikki Champion: |00:28:09| Yeah, I feel like I've been really fortunate along my whole path to have some really great mentors, both male and female. I just fell in my own personal progression. I had to actively seek out female mentors a lot more. They were harder to find. And that's why I wanted to go up to Alaska and work with all the women up there. When I got down to Utah and I took the position down here, the woman who was in this position before me, Evelyn, had started an all female women's avalanche education program. And I think that's huge for the reasons I just discussed. I think that by introducing more female specific education, it creates more opportunities for women to see other women in leadership positions, in educator positions, in forecaster positions, and then also create more mentor mentee relationships. I think as we just start introducing more women into. The avalanche education and the avalanche world we're going to start seeing. More women continuing down their own personal path.
Tom Kelly: |00:29:21| Nikki, you yourself are becoming the role model now for others. Is that a role that that you're embracing yourself and trying to bring others into the field that has brought you so much excitement and accomplishment?
Nikki Champion: |00:29:37| It is like I said, I think women's education is a first huge stepping stone this year we went from about three women specific education to seven courses we're doing this year. And I'm involved with all of those as well. I do find that most of my partners I go out with are female. I go out with all my coworkers and they're great, but I do for my personal field days, really enjoy going out with women. And I would like to see more women enter these entry level avalanched education courses, maybe feel more confident to then continue their own avalanched path, start taking some of the farther along avalanched education courses, and then maybe pursue a career in avalanche or snow science.
Tom Kelly: |00:30:25| Let's look at the situation today, partly because of the pandemic, but actually even before the pandemic, the sales of backcountry gear were absolutely skyrocketing in the last few years. We saw it this past spring after the lifts closed in March, that more and more people were hitting the backcountry. And we're already seeing it this year. What are you anticipating in the Utah backcountry this winter? Will we see this real influx of new people into backcountry skiing?
Nikki Champion: |00:30:53| I think we will I think that we're going to have a lot of new users in the backcountry and maybe non-traditional users, people that normally would spend their winters just in a ski resort. But with the prospect of ski resorts closing or the uncertainty, I think we're going to have a lot more people pushed into the backcountry. I mean, last year when the ski resorts closed, we had about a hundred human triggered avalanches reported, and that was just during covid. So I think we're we saw more people enter the backcountry last spring. And I think we're going to continue to see more people entering the backcountry this upcoming season.
Tom Kelly: |00:31:32| So I've just purchased backcountry gear, I am ready to go, what's my first step? What should I what's the initial element that I should look at for my pathway to learning how to go into the backcountry safely?
Nikki Champion: |00:31:47| So you did the first step, the first step is getting the gear that doesn't only include gear to travel uphill, but that includes avalanche rescue gear as well. So your beacon shovel probe, all three are essential pieces. You can't use one without the other. After that, you need to get the training. And this is a really unique gear because I think there's a lot of resources available for people. We had an e-learning module go live on. No, before you go dog, which is a just online learning module that you can work through from the comfort of your own home. There's going to be a lot of free live Know Before You Go one-hour lectures. Beyond that, I think getting on the snow is really important. The first stepping stone for that could be just in a backcountry one on one, which is an evening lecture. Normally this year it's going to be in a more hybrid form. We're going to have just all your classes and lectures recorded, and then we're going to do a Zoom question and answer with your instructor. And then a day on the field after you maybe outgrow just the one day on the field, there's avalanche education that goes beyond that, like an avalanche level one, which is a three-day course, all of which have on snow component. And then from there, people can choose the path that they want to go down, either a recreational avalanche education path or a professional path, and getting time in avalanche terrain in general.
Tom Kelly: |00:33:12| So I understand that Utah Avalanche Center has really put out a lot more online learning this year to help to meet this demand. You had mentioned Know Before You Go dot org (kbyg.org) Is that a really good first resource for it? Never, ever to go there and just get the basics down?
Nikki Champion: |00:33:32| Yeah, I think it's a great resource, it's really well put together was put together by one of our forecasters here and it breaks it down into a really simple, digestible content with videos, interactive steps, stories, entire program. It's a really great first stepping stone. And you can do it from the comfort of your home, which is great.
Tom Kelly: |00:33:56| Do you have any advice for those of us who have friends or know someone who's bought the skis and the poles and the skins, but they're just not sure about education, how do we convince them of the importance of knowing what they're getting into before they set foot in the backcountry?
Nikki Champion: |00:34:14| It's a hard topic, but it is it is so important and it's almost a little bit morbid when you go into somebody or go into the backcountry with somebody, if they don't have the proper training, they don't have the proper education, they don't know how to use their gear. They're telling all their partners. That they don't really care about their life, which is a hard way to put it, but it's true. You want to go into the backcountry with somebody who knows how to do a rescue and you want to make sure that you know how to do a rescue because you know, you're not traveling with people you don't care about. And so. To have the education, to have the training and to know how to use all your gear is is telling all your partners that you care about them and you care that they live.
Tom Kelly: |00:35:02| Yeah, it's a it is a tough discussion, but I think it's one that all of us skiers really need to have to ensure that everybody that we know that's going back there is looking out not just for themselves, but for those around them. Those are their skiing with. So let's as we as we wind down, Nicki, let's talk a little bit about what gets us out there in the first place. And I don't know if you can remember back to your first Poutre experience out West where you dropped in and you said, oh, my goodness, this is really special. Do you remember that day?
Nikki Champion: |00:35:34| I do remember that day and I just remember kind of the transition and why I initially got into the backcountry in general. It was a new way of exploring. It was just a new way to be outside, it kind of causes you to slow down and look around and experience the mountains in a new way. We've a lot of us have spent a ton of time in the ski resorts. And, you know, there's always that new idea of exploration. And what if and I think that's a reason a lot of people are also getting into the backcountry. It's new. It's exciting.
Tom Kelly: |00:36:07| And do you are you always looking for that perfect line, and particularly when you're in the backcountry and you have the ability to create your own space in a safe way, what is it that drives you to find that perfect line or that sensation of floating down the mountain?
Nikki Champion: |00:36:23| You know, sometimes when we ski for work every day, it's not always powder, so I think just looking for the best line of the day, whether that be a really high snow day or avalanche danger is high. So it might just be some low angle wiggles or maybe the best line to get out of steeping or skiing bulletproof ice as fast as you can. I think just looking for whatever is going to cause me to have the most fun that day on the way down is what I look for.
Tom Kelly: |00:36:57| So, Nikki, you're a long way from Timber Ridge, aren't you?
Nikki Champion: |00:37:02| Yeah, there's a little bit more than two hundred vertical feet here.
Tom Kelly: |00:37:05| Well, it's been great to have you on, Nikki Champion from the Utah Avalanche Center, and we're going to wrap up this episode of Last Chair presented by High West with what I call fresh tracks. Some simple questions, no wrong answers, just kind of learn a little bit more about you. And first of all, a fun outdoor activity that you enjoy outside of skiing or climbing.
Nikki Champion: |00:37:27| I really enjoy mountain biking. I think it's pretty similar to backcountry skiing. You've got to pick your line and you suffer on the uphill. So that's kind of what you'll find me doing in the summer.
Tom Kelly: |00:37:38| Do you and I know you're outside of Utah generally in the summer, but have you had an opportunity to mountain bike here much?
Nikki Champion: |00:37:46| I have I even went this Monday, we got you know, we got a little bit lucky with the weather, so I've spent quite a bit of time in the Salt Lake area biking in the fall. And then I've spent some time in the desert as well.
Tom Kelly: |00:37:58| Any particular trails you like on the mountain bike?
Nikki Champion: |00:38:01| I've really enjoyed almost all the trails I've done, especially in the Moab area, one of my favorite and most memorable trails to date is the whole enchilada down in the Moab area. Yeah.
Tom Kelly: |00:38:16| Ok, let's say that the backcountry isn't safe, you've got an entire sun at home, what are you making for a nice midwinter dinner?
Nikki Champion: |00:38:28| So midwinter, I'm really into soups in general in the winter, I think they're really nice to have on hand, you can prep them for your whole week, but if I had a whole day, I might do like a big hot pot of ramen with some roasted veggies, maybe kind of like a creamy sesame broth and then a bunch of fun fresh toppings like cilantro and some peppers and carrots and just a nice big bowl like the sides of my face.
Tom Kelly: |00:38:56| You know, everybody's coming over for dinner now, right?
Nikki Champion: |00:38:59| I'm not going to tell where I live.
Tom Kelly: |00:39:01| Ok, the most spectacular line that you've skied in Utah.
Nikki Champion: |00:39:05| So one of my favorite lines would probably just be the full day in general. I really like doing a little Cottonwood day to Big Cottonwood. Pre COVID when you could take the bus up to Alta, head up to Superior, drop in, head back up, ski Room of Doom into Mineral and then hitchhike out of a Big Cottonwood. Hitch hitchhiking. Doesn't work that well right now. But I think just the full day of going from one Cottonwood to the other and to skiing some fun lines in between is my favorite route.
Tom Kelly: |00:39:41| Do you have a favorite run in bounds at any of the Utah Resorts state that's particularly memorable for you?
Nikki Champion: |00:39:51| Oh, geez, I don't think I do yet. Last year, I didn't spend as much time in balance in general, anything off of high tea and out has been pretty fun, though.
Tom Kelly: |00:40:02| Your go to backcountry ski setup.
Nikki Champion: |00:40:11| My go to backcountry ski set up recently has I like to ski like right around the hundred underfoot range, so I really I ski the ninety nine or the ninety nine whalers for a long time this year. I'm trying out to wander another both our Utah based companies like WNDR Intention or something that I'm going to give a go and I'm excited to try as well. That's in the 110 range, so a little bit fatter.
Tom Kelly: |00:40:39| OK, another one: your favorite Utah craft beer.
Nikki Champion: |00:40:43| All right, so this is two - one of them was just released, it's the into Uintah Was Angeles. It's an easy drinking beer, but a cool thing about it is it's got a QR code on it that brings you right to our website. What do you think is great for people sipping beer when they're on their tailgate? Or hopefully you're not sipping beer before you head out in the morning? I'm not sure what people
Tom Kelly: |00:41:05| I was going to have you clarify that actually, so seriously with this beer, you do the QR code, it takes you to Utah Avalanche Center.
Nikki Champion: |00:41:14| Yes, exactly, so people can submit an observation right after they're done skiing, they can check the forecast or they can check out all of our resources that we have, whether it be education or courses as well.
Tom Kelly: |00:41:26| And a note, a note to everyone, though, this is for after skiing, right?
Nikki Champion: |00:41:30| This is for after skiing, yeah, don't do this at nine a.m., maybe, like we'll we'll get a QR code on a coffee cup or something some day.
Tom Kelly: |00:41:36| That would be good.
Nikki Champion: |00:41:37| But for now it's afterwards. And another beer I really liked was from Level Crossing, their Rising Hope IPA.
Tom Kelly: |00:41:45| That is a good one, I just stumbled on that the other day.
Nikki Champion: |00:41:49| Yeah, it's awesome, it's a charity beer, it's just got some good hints, it's not super happy like a lot of IPAs are.
Tom Kelly: |00:41:57| And Nikki, my quintessential closing question groomer's Bump's Glades or Poutre.
Nikki Champion: |00:42:04| In the backcountry powder. But in a resort, I still will always love a groomer.
Tom Kelly: |00:42:09| You like to put that ski on edge and rip those gas turns.
Nikki Champion: |00:42:12| It's really fun, I don't get to do that often anymore, but when I do, it feels good.
Tom Kelly: |00:42:15| That's the Michigan in you. Nikki Champion, thank you for joining us on Last Chair, presented by High West. It's been fun to talk to you.
Nikki Champion: |00:42:26| Yeah, thanks, Tom.
