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5 people caught in heli trip avalanche

Mike King

AKA Habacomike
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I'm thinking way more seriously about beeping in bounds if I travel anywhere with any history at all of trouble.. and that list of places with trouble has grown considerably this season.
@crgildart, I wear my beacon fairly frequently when skiing inbounds. After all, I have it, and doesn't do any good sitting in my locker. So when we are in a storm cycle and I might be skiing stuff that might slide, I put it on.

But the first line of defense is not to put yourself into the situation where you might be involved in a slide in the first place. You could accomplish that by quitting skiing, but that's not a limitation I'm willing to accept. By becoming more educated about snow science, the conditions that lead to an increased risk of avalanches, the risks of terrain, decision making, etc., you actually become a more accomplished skier. You learn more about reading terrain. You watch the weather, the wind loading of slopes, identify potential terrain traps, etc. It is highly useful in skiing big mountain inbounds terrain, such as that at Whistler Blackcomb, Jackson, Big Sky, Highlands, Taos, A-Basin, Breckenridge, and even less steep areas like Winter Park and Vail. And it sets you up to be a more informed person if you do decide to venture outside the boundaries of the ski area, whether it is side country, touring, or cat/heli skiing.

A good place to start is to read Bruce Tremper's book "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain." @James recounted how Tremper doesn't ski terrain that is likely to slide, but the opening of the book recounts his epiphany that came form his involvement in an avalanche at Bridger Bowl. It is a well written book that can give you a good introduction to traveling in avalanche terrain, including some quite interesting observations about the traps that come from relying on experience when dealing with very low probability but very high consequence risk.

Mike
 
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Tricia

Tricia

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I'll agree that places that were considered safe for many years aren't safe this year. The runouts of the avis we've been seeing are huge and way beyond 'normal'. So this year requires special consideration to thinking beyond the usual runouts.
I'm not debating you, but adding to this part of your post.

Granted I've never done the kind of backcountry skiing that we're talking about in this thread, and I'm not knowledgeable about, well...most of this topic, other than what I've read, but when I read things about avalanches with the width, depth, and power of the ones happening this year it makes me think respectfully about the unpredictability of these powerful slides.
Looking at and reading about the Highlands avalanche and how it went down to the bottom of the valley and back up the other side, taking trees out on the other side of the valley floor was an eye opener.
I mean, look at the really knowledgeable people who have been caught in avalanches this year.

If I were in the backcountry I wouldn't think about being in danger on the opposite slope.

One of these days I'm going to take an avalanche course and educate myself a bit more about this topic. In the mean time I'm just going to read what the knowledgeable members here are saying.
 

Monique

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What I'm saying is that we could be to a point were skiing places a winch cat can't get to or handle may be getting too dangerous to ski as often as they used to be in play.

Ugh.

Is this season weather or climate? Who knows. And climate is a topic that gets this discussion deleted. But even so, this season is different than recent history, but all seasons are different than recent history.

To emphasize, though - there is weather, and there is climate. Any one event, even one season, cannot be proven to be part of global climate change vs. simply a thing that happened.

Thing is, it doesn't matter at all to the current discussion. The tools that avy researchers have developed are just as meaningful this season as they have been in low snow seasons. Even if there are signs of this sort of season being more frequent (and I think most of us ski primarily at resorts, and would be plenty happy with that development), it doesn't mean that all is doom and gloom. It just means we should continue to exercise extreme caution around snow and have a great deal of respect for how insignificant we humans are vs natural events. And even if/with global climate change, there will be seasons both big and small.

I'm thinking way more seriously about beeping in bounds if I travel anywhere with any history at all of trouble.. and that list of places with trouble has grown considerably this season.

If you own a beacon, why wouldn't you just wear one all the time? No decision necessary. Batteries are cheap.
 

Wilhelmson

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Wonder why people wait until later in the season to ski Tuckerman in NH but in the Rockies they ski backcountry all the time.

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sparty

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Wonder why people wait until later in the season to ski Tuckerman in NH but in the Rockies they ski backcountry all the time.

Tuckerman Ravine is an outlier. It's within a reasonable day trip for a huge number of people, the vast majority of whom have no backcountry experience or skills. It's popular in the spring in large part because the weather and slide risks are less than they are in midwinter, but it gets skied all winter (c.f. @ski_the_whites, for example), and the spring scene is...interesting. I'll be up there at some point(s) this spring, but I'm fully expecting to be at least moderately terrified by what I see going on around me if I get there on a weekend (booting with snowboard in hands, hanging out below overhead hazards, etc).

I think there's a general recognition in the Rockies that the spring window is best for certain objectives, too. You still need things to line up in terms of snow and weather, but I know that my friends in Montana generally saw April and May as a good time to go for bigger lines where the mid-winter exposure was outside of their risk tolerance. The difference, IMO, is that there's simply a lot more alpine b/c terrain in the Rockies than there is on the East Coast, particularly when distance to population centers is considered (certain parts of the Presis aside, most East Coast alpine terrain is difficult to access in one or more ways).
 

RJS

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Wonder why people wait until later in the season to ski Tuckerman in NH but in the Rockies they ski backcountry all the time.

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I'm probably not the person who should be answering this, but expert backcountry skiers like Andrew Drummond are skiing Mount Washington all throughout the winter. The vast majority of people who ski Tuckerman's though do so in the late spring because they don't have avalanche equipment or training, and if you hit Tuckerman's at the right time in the spring, the avalanche danger is very low. Obviously at other times in the year the avalanche danger can be very high. It's been over 10 years now since somebody has died in an avalanche on Mount Washington, but deaths from sliding falls are unfortunately not uncommon.
 

LiquidFeet

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It gets darn cold up there in winter. And the wind does blow. It's brutal.
Spring sees milder weather.
A warm bluebird Saturday in April is nice. The crowds can be colorful.
 

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