"Clear in front."
"Clear to the rear.
"All clear!"
"Ready to fire."
"Fire!"
BOOM.
Those are the only sounds that fill the thin, crisp winter air as a 105 mm semi-fixed howitzer round is fired into a mountain snowfield as part of the Army's Avalanche Control Program.
In 2016 that scene played out around 9,250 times among 17 avalanche-prone sites in nine Western states. The long-range artillery delivered explosives to snow packs perched perilously upon distant peaks. The blasts' percussions caused tons of snow to rumble down the slopes and come to rest without endangering public safety or local commerce.
Using military artillery to control avalanches is not new to the Army, which did it in Europe during WW II and was the first to successfully do it in the U.S., according to a paper on the program's history written by Doug Abromeit. In 1949, according to the former director of the Forest Service's National Avalanche Center, two Forest Service employees convinced the Utah National Guard to fire 75 mm French howitzer rounds into avalanche zones above Alta Ski Area. The Army has governed the ACP ever since to keep ski resorts and other forestry locations open, reduce roadway closures, and protect motorists and mountain villages from deadly avalanches.
Army agreements with federal and state agencies replaced National Guard shooters in the early 1950s. Now the cannons are fired by trained members of the Avalanche Artillery Users of North America Committee, a professional non-military, non-profit organization of 462 artillery program users. They fire an average of 3,500 artillery rounds at each site per year, typically from January to May and in December, with a 95 percent effective rate for starting snow slides.
James Alderson, the program manager since 2010, works in TACOM Life Cycle Management Command's Integrated Logistics Support Center at the Detroit Arsenal. He said avalanches are not a significant threat in the Eastern U.S. and the Army has no need to use avalanche control to support Soldiers.
"We're not a weapons program," Alderson emphasized. "We're mitigating avalanche threats by using artillery to start smaller avalanches so the bigger ones don't affect commerce and folks. We want that percussion to start that avalanche. You want the ground to shake real good so you can get this fallout. That's what they're looking for."
Part of Alderson's responsibilities include managing M101A1 howitzer, M60 battle tank and recoilless rifle loans and leases to the 17 sites belonging to the U.S. Forest Service; National Park Service; state departments of transportation in Alaska, Colorado, Washington and Wyoming; and the Alaska railroad. He said the howitzer is the weapon of choice with 74 active in the program and another 38 in reserve at Sierra Army Depot in California. Only one agency uses the tank and one site uses the rifle, as a backup.
He manages the logistics and training for the artillery users -- the AAUNAC members -- who in turn train two- or three-person crews to fire the cannons and rifles; Army specialists train AAUNAC tank operators directly. He conducts site visits to inspect the program to Army standards regarding security, storage, ammunition and firearms clearances. Because the Army owns the loaned and leased equipment, Alderson also manages maintenance contracts for logistics readiness centers at Fort Carson, Colorado; Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; and JB Lewis-McChord, Washington. Alderson turns to Pat Marshall in TACOM ILSC's Product Support Integration Directorate to help out if the guns are malfunctioning or if the LRCs can't resolve an issue.
Users chip in money to cover the program's $45,000 annual costs.
Several safety measures are in place to protect crews, civilians and roadways when the avalanches are triggered. Alderson said that rounds are fired from permanent structures three-fourths of a mile to 6 miles away. Ski resorts and local roads are closed, and crews double-check the areas before artillery is fired to ensure no one is left behind. They also keep records of where and when shots are fired so duds can be located and destroyed. Afterward, roads are cleared as quickly as possible so motorists may continue their travels.
The danger of uncontrolled snow slides was reflected in a recent online post by the Colorado Avalanche Control Center. "A strong winter storm will impact Colorado's mountains today," the warning said. "Large human triggered avalanches are very likely. If triggered these avalanches will be large enough to kill you. Travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended."
That dire warning included Telluride, a popular ski resort town that sits in a canyon surrounded by cliffs and steep, tree-lined mountains. An avalanche there could bury the town in snow, severely impacting its citizens and visitors, and crippling its livelihood -- the very reasons why the ACP helps protect the area from the deadly slides.
The Mammoth Mountain ski area in California is another avalanche-prone area covered by the ACP. It had received 126 inches, or 10 1/2 feet, of new snow in just the first 12 days of January 2017 -- on top of 104 inches already on the ground -- with more on the way. According to Alderson, it was a wet snow, which is more prone to avalanches due to the sheer weight of the snow pack.
Nathan Heit, Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol Manager, said they were firing rounds at the mountain every day. With limited sight during a snow storm and at night, he said they used "blind firing," or shooting based on data gathered previously, to move the snow. Though the slides picked up a lot of debris, no structures were destroyed. "This is a good lesson in why these tools are important," Heit said.
With almost 70 years of experience in helping to mitigate avalanche threats, Alderson said the Army will continue to loan and lease artillery as long as it can be supported or maintained, or until agencies acquire non-military means to do it themselves.
"There is some civilian equipment that will be replacing the artillery, which is exactly what we want," he said. "They use propane, oxygen or nitrogen. Charges sit on top of a known avalanche path and can be remotely charged from our office. People sit there and hit the button, and it creates the same thing as an artillery round -- just a big, hard, downward explosion -- and that's how those avalanches start running. We'll continue to provide artillery until civilian means are in place, and those are the types that would replace our artillery."
Alderson said there have been no incidents or accidents on his watch.
"I've been doing this six years and haven't had any loss of life, fingers or anything," he boasted. He stated that there were fatalities associated with recoilless rifles earlier in the program when rounds blew up the in chamber. The rifles were replaced with a different recoilless but the same type of incident happened next year, though no one died. "That was another thing for us when I took this program -- to weed all this stuff out. With the 105 mm round, it's still in production today, still in surveillance, so we're actually giving those guys an inspected round. The rounds are safe, they're qualified. The weapons are safe, they're qualified, and then the training is done by these guys. It's a pretty neat program. I like it."
The American Avalanche Association reported 30 avalanche-related fatalities during the 2015-2016 ski season; none were in areas participating in the Army's Avalanche Control Program.
It won't be long before the cannons fall silent as this avalanche season comes to an end, signaling a different "all clear" to the ski resorts, forestry locations, roadways and mountain villages. This one will let them know they are safe from the threat of dangerous snow slides until next season, when the ACP will take aim again.
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