Featured image: Aaron Diamond
As backcountry terrain sees more skiers year after year, the need for technology to maximize safety grows ever more prevalent. Grand Teton National Park Foundation, in partnership with Grand Teton National Park and Bridger Teton Avalanche Center, is raising money to purchase and install additional weather stations in the 310,000-acre park to help make backcountry use of the Tetons safer for skiers.
“The Teton Range is about 45 miles long and all the weather data right now is collected in the southern end of the range,” said Maddy Johnson, manager of communications & development officer for Grand Teton National Park Foundation. “Weather and snow can vary a lot over short distances so the idea was to put a weather station in the central part of the range and then in the northern part of the range to provide skiers and riders a greater breadth of information before they go into the park’s backcountry.”
There will be two weather stations at each new site. One to collect wind data such as wind speeds and direction; and one to measure the snow’s depth and new snow fall. All of this data is used to help determine avalanche risk in that area of the park.
“The data will go on to the current Bridger Teton Avalanche Center [website] and feed into the weather data that folks can gather there [to] inform the forecast discussion that is created each day,” said Johnson.
The fundraising goal for the project is set at $25,000 and if that goal is met by September 1, the weather stations will be installed before the start of the 2018-19 ski season.
