Snowshoeing Adventures Open Up
The Utah Avalanche Center is offering Backcountry 101 snowshoeing programs with essential skills for safe winter travel and avalanche awareness. Eldorado Canyon State Park in Colorado just opened advanced day pass bookings for hikes and climbs among its famed red rock cliffs. For something more adventurous, guided four-day snowshoe treks in France's wild Pyrenees National Park include exploring secret valleys and tracking wildlife in pristine winter landscapes.
The Utah Avalanche Center (UAC) was formally established in 1980 through a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, building on a legacy of snow science research that began in the area in the 1930s. The nonprofit Friends of the UAC was later formed in 1990 to provide stable funding for its forecasting and educational programs. UAC's educational outreach includes the "Know Before You Go" program, which has reached over 200,000 people in Utah since its launch in 2005. These courses teach essential skills like interpreting avalanche forecasts, recognizing unstable snowpack, and performing companion rescue using transceivers, probes, and shovels. Utah has the most "sidecountry" avalanche fatalities in the nation—deaths occurring in backcountry areas adjacent to ski resorts. Eldorado Canyon State Park implemented its timed-entry reservation system after annual visitation nearly doubled over a decade, from 243,924 visitors in 2010 to 529,579 in 2020. The surge in traffic became unsustainable for the park's limited 214 parking spaces and the small community of Eldorado Springs. The park's famous cliffs are part of the 300-million-year-old Fountain Formation, the same sandstone that forms Boulder's Flatirons and the Red Rocks Amphitheater. However, some metamorphic rocks within the canyon, like the Coal Creek Quartzite, date back as far as 1.7 billion years. Before becoming a state park in 1978, the area was a resort destination known for its warm artesian springs and high-wire acts by Ivy Baldwin. Pyrenees National Park serves as a critical habitat for reintroduced and protected species, including brown bears and the Pyrenean chamois, a type of goat-antelope known locally as the isard. The park is also one of the only places in Europe where all four of the continent's vulture species can be found, including the rare bearded vulture which feeds almost exclusively on bone marrow. The Pyrenees landscape has been shaped by centuries of human activity, particularly transhumance—the seasonal migration of livestock to high mountain pastures. In 2013
