Dust on snow drops a double whammy on local recreation

“In ‘normal’ years there’s not enough to satisfy all demand”

For Part 2 of our three-part series investigating the consequences of dust-on-snow in the Colorado River Basin, we focus in on the real and potential impacts to local recreation. Part 3 will address the impacts on agriculture, and the management challenges associated with a shrinking water supply that sees ever- increasing demands from a variety of users.

Competing interests complicate water resource management, to put it lightly. Recreation is but one use among many, including agricultural and municipal uses. And even within the recreation category, different users, say fly fishermen, have different priorities and “ideal flows” compared to commercial boating operations on places like the Taylor River. All these pursuits have economic weight tied to them as well.
Locally, Frank Kugel, general manager for the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, is tasked with balancing the needs and wants of many stakeholders who place year-round demands on local water resources. And with climate models projecting runoff losses of 7 percent to 20 percent in the Colorado River Basin due to human-induced climate change, dust on snow doesn’t make Kugel’s job any easier.
“We’re very supportive of the research, it’s important we understand the impacts of dust on snow,” said Kugel. “We want to be sure any future water-supply models include dust on snow.
“For one example, the Colorado River Water Availability study is a major effort in determining how much water will be available in this basin for current and future needs. And future studies will need to take dust on snow into account,” Kugel concluded.
Water- and snow-based recreation is a major economic driver in the Gunnison Basin and the reason many people choose to live here. From a ski industry perspective, dust on snow can have a number of direct and indirect effects on the snowpack.
“It’s a double whammy from the perspective of impacts to recreation—that snowmelt would occur three weeks earlier and runoff reduced by 5 percent,” said Kugel. “If it proves true, this could have a dramatic impact on the skiing industry. Having dust on snow could cause some runs to be closed earlier than usual, and spring skiing season could be shortened as a result.”
And while the earlier runoff wouldn’t likely affect snowmaking from a timing perspective, the overall supply of water due to the 5 percent decrease could. “If we continue to drop 5 percent per year, groundwater flows would be lessened, and that could have an impact on snowmaking operations,” said Kugel. “The Forest Service has required a special use permit of Crested Butte Mountain Resort that requires a minimum flow in the East River in order for them to keep pumping.”
John Sale, CBMR director of planning, said, “From an operations side, they really haven’t changed anything due to these events. They have seen patrol closing some terrain earlier due to snow heating. We don’t really know when it’s going to happen, and you just deal with it when it does. To me it seems like it’s been increasing, especially at the end of the year when you’re looking forward to spring skiing.”
CBMR mountain operations manager Chris Corliss said they are taking a wait-and-see approach, and that to date, his staff hasn’t had to blow more snow to compensate for the impact of dust falling on ski area terrain. But the extremes, particularly solar aspects, may be closing earlier due to wet-snow avalanches and instability.

Dust drives avalanche hazard
Increased avalanche hazard is another byproduct of dust-on-snow events. The Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton, Colo. is at the forefront of dust-on-snow research, and director Chris Landry co-authored the recently released study, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, that investigates how dust on snow is affecting runoff from the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Landry will speak about the role of dust on avalanche hazard at the Colorado Snow and Avalanche Workshop in Leadville, Colo. on Friday, October 8, 2010.
According to Landry, this last dust season saw nine measurable events, beginning in October 2009 and ending in May 2010. The majority took place in April (four) and May (three)—prime spring. Otherwise, the timing is unpredictable and recorded data goes back less than a decade, when the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies began its research.
Landry said the dust is sourced from the “Colorado Plateau at large,” and the source location changes from storm to storm. “Conditions vary out there over time and space—it’s a large landscape.”
When the dust reaches the local mountains, it can create layers that influence avalanche processes. Landry is in the process of researching the phenomenon.
“There is no question dust can play a role in dry and wet avalanche processes,” he explained. “The mechanisms for that are complicated and pretty scenario-specific. There are narrow scenarios in which dust will play a role in dry-slab avalanching, and even more scenarios where dust plays a role in wet snow avalanching.”

Water-based recreation
Commercial and private boaters and fisherman are not immune to the declining flows caused by dust on snow.
Rusty Thompson is a fly fishing guide for Crested Butte’s Dragonfly Anglers. He said flows are definitely lower this fall than in recent years. “We’ve floated commercially the last few Octobers during the first and second weeks, but this year is different. The Gunnison River has been un-navigable the past week.”
Water levels are important from a navigation standpoint, but less water in the streams means a higher water temperature, which is bad for the fishery.
“A big concern is water temperatures increasing with the decrease in flows,” said Thompson. “We were lucky because they kept the Taylor River at 250cfs [cubic feet per second], but the East River has dropped dramatically. Once [fall] irrigation starts, it drops the rivers dramatically.”
Longtime local boater Chris Menges has observed a dramatic change in the local creek-boating season, particularly the last two years, due to dust-on-snow events. He noted three main impacts he’s seen from the boater’s perspective.
“It seems with earlier runoff we lose a portion of our season because the other creeks are running earlier, but you still can’t access them because of snow on the road,” explained Menges. “We’re losing part of an already short season. With dust on snow, and then if it gets hot, you’ll have an extremely high and fast peak runoff. It’s dangerous for users, and really cut out a chunk of the season this year. We weren’t even paddling the creeks because they were so high. There’s a huge loss of snowpack when you can’t be on the water, and we are losing what should normally fuel the rest of the season.”
Menges mentioned possible economic implications as well. “A lot of paddlers from all over the state and out east come to paddle the local creeks. I noticed a lot less kayakers in town this year; they’re usually here late June. With that ending earlier, people are coming up and realizing the creeks are down, or checking the river gauges and not coming at all.
“The competitive Colorado kayak circuit comes to an end that time of year—all the people who come out for competitions in earlier summer used to come here after the events,” said Menges. “With an earlier season, the flows and when they can get here might not coincide any longer.”
According to Kugel, “The boating industry could see impacts as a result of lower flows in the summer, if the runoff occurs earlier in the season. This year, we had a below normal snowpack, and that came off more quickly than usual and earlier than usual due in large part to dust on snow. The peak flows had subsided by mid-summer and continued to drop throughout the season. This caused low flows on most of the streams in the basin in August and September. The added impact of 5 percent reduction in overall water supply means that we can’t fill our reservoirs as easily as we could without dust-on-snow conditions.”
Water management in the west and in the Gunnison Basin is going to require some give and take—not everyone’s going to get their fill.
“In normal years there’s not enough to satisfy all demand,” said Kugel. “With tighter than normal supplies due to earlier runoff or less supply, these things get more difficult to deal with.”

Next week, we’ll explore the impacts of dust on snow on agriculture, water storage and municipal uses.