BOMBS AWAY
Alternative avalanche mitigation strategies are an intense topic of discussion this year, in the aftermath of devastating snow deaths throughout the Mountain West.
Mammoth Mountain has been working to minimize risk to patrollers through installing gas-powered remote avalanche control systems (RACS).
But a potential new strategy has entered the scene.
The player is Drone Amplified, a Nebraska based company with an avant-garde model: triggering avalanches via drone. This new wave technology allows the person controlling the drone to be miles away from the avalanche path, so long as the operator can still see the machine.
The drone would let ski patrollers sit in their office and drink coffee while mitigating avalanche risk at the same time.
“With the drone, we are removing the people from risk,” said Carrick Detweiler, CEO of Drone Amplified, during an interview with The Sheet on Monday.
His company’s design, called MONTIS, works by an electronic ignition detonator, deploying explosives directly above the snow pack. The detonator can only be activated within a pre-set “geo-fence” – where the drone’s driver wants the avalanche to be triggered. The machine is adaptable for any type of explosive a ski patrol or highway crew might have, be it ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil), packaged emulsion, or cast boosters.
“Our system is adapted to whatever kind of explosive the customers are already procuring,” said Daniel Justa, Drone Amplified’s Vice President of Business Development, during the same interview. “We don’t really want to be involved in the explosives aspect of it. [The customers] just have to use the electronic detonator.”
The system also comes with a visual and an infrared camera, allowing the controller to see up close where they are deploying explosives as well as avoid living creatures.
MONTIS will not replace other tools like the Wyssen towers, a popular explosive-based RACS used in many Utah ski resorts, or the old fashioned way of having ski patrollers deploy explosives by hand. Instead, Drone Amplified’s device will complement these existing systems.
“The drone would fill in the gaps [on locations] where [mitigators] might not want to spend money to install RACS, or where there are environmental concerns due to sight lines and impact on location,” Detweiler said. “Even where there are RACS, the systems often have 12 or 24 shots before a helicopter needs to be sent out to reload them. The drone could be used in the meantime and save the RACS shots for when it is really needed.”
The MONTIS technology has been used by the Alaska Department of Public Transportation (ADOT) for highway mitigation over the last four years. Drone Amplified also worked closely with ADOT in the research and development phase of their project.
Currently, there are four MONTIS drones in Alaska and one on loan to a Drone Amplified partner in Canada. The starting price for the device is $125,000.
Drone Amplified doesn’t have to go through the same legislative barriers from California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) that installing RACS does, because the drones are governed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
However, per the FAA’s regulations, a drone can only be flown within eyesight of the operator, and flying a drone with an explosive is generally prohibited. Drone Amplified has applied for a national exemption through the FAA. The exemption was already approved in Canada and for ADOT.
Detweiler is no stranger to working with the FAA. His company was already approved for the national exemption for their IGNIS technology, a drone developed to enhance prescribed burns for forest fire management. Drone Amplified began developing the IGNIS technology in 2017, when the company was founded.
There are now hundreds of these IGNIS drones used throughout the country, used by agencies such as the US Forest Service and CAL FIRE.
“During any major wildfire, our drone systems are there,” Detweiler said. “Whether it’s just doing observations or ignitions for prescribed burns.”
Detweiler hopes his MONTIS drones will someday exist on the same scale. He believes departments of transportation in avalanche prone states will be the earliest adopters of these tools, and ski resorts will catch on later.
“I want to go skiing and see these systems in use,” he said. “Right now, [mitigators] have all kinds of tools, but none of them fit in the middle between a RAC placement, a helicopter, and a person. The drones fill that gap.”
