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James

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“Recently opened terrain” might be a hard metric. Possibly you could do a word search through reports. You could suggest it as a category to include. Define “recent” though.
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karlo

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With the recent fatalities at Silver Mtn, It seems like there's an increasingly clear pattern of inbounds avalanches early season on terrain that's recently opened. It's always been fairly apparent but probably worth emphasizing following this tragedy.

I'd love to see a study of how many inbounds fatalities have been in late December or January on recently opened terrain. I bet it would be eye-opening.

I'm using this as a motivator to wear my beacon when I otherwise wouldn't the next few weeks, even if there isn't much new snow. It seems far more important to do so this time of year than on similar days in March and April.

Am I off base with this thinking?

What may be more relevant is the avy advisory. If hazard is elevated, stay on groomers or shallower slopes that are also not exposed to hazards from above. The alerts that morning in the Silver area,

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It was even in the paper that morning,


For those that do not know, here is the scale,

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Per this first hand report,
it seems that ski patrol had not checked the efficacy of mitigation steps. So, maybe for terrain that is Considerable hazard or higher, confer with ski patrol to determine what has and has not been done, then make your decision?? The thing to keep in mind is that resorts endeavor to make things safer, not iron-clad safe, something impossible for any resort to do.
 

Unpiste

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It’s been mentioned before, but its worth pointing out again. Hazard reports such as that posted above are not intended to apply to controlled, in-bounds terrain.

Talk to ski patrol if you’re concerned about conditions, but if patrol opens terrain with no further warnings posted, they’re doing it because they have good reason to believe conditions are safe.
 

karlo

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if patrol opens terrain with no further warnings posted, they’re doing it because they have good reason to believe conditions are safe.
Except when they’re not - controlled well enough and safe. At hazard level 4 & 5, if patrol is wrong, those are killer avy’s at elevated probability. In that context, each of us can take some personal responsibility. I’m proposing one possibility.
 

tball

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I very much agree with the thoughts above.

I do feel there is a particularly dangerous combination of a) a high avalanche hazard level, which is often accompanied by b) abundant recent snowfall, and c) newly opened steep terrain (which often happens in late December and January). It's stating the obvious, but I think it's worth emphasizing and keeping in mind.

Just one of those should have us on guard, but I think all three conditions is a particularly dangerous recipe. Off the top of my head, a large percentage of inbounds fatalities had all three.

The problem is those conditions also make for some of the best damn skiing, and I have a difficult time moderating myself when faced with an abundance of the drug that is powder.
 

tball

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“Recently opened terrain” might be a hard metric. Possibly you could do a word search through reports. You could suggest it as a category to include. Define “recent” though.
I'm thinking recent is in the last week or so, of course depending on skier traffic and a whole host of other things.

You can feel it under your skis. There isn't the compaction from skiers that you get after a slope is open for a while.
 

Unpiste

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Except when they’re not - controlled well enough and safe. At hazard level 4 & 5, if patrol is wrong, those are killer avy’s at elevated probability. In that context, each of us can take some personal responsibility. I’m proposing one possibility.
What you’re proposing sounds like second-guessing those on the mountain with both the most experience and data on the current hazards, which I don’t think is especially useful. If patrol were to publish their own report, I expect you’d find it looks quite different on any terrain that they’ve actually opened.

The better question to ask, when there is an incident, is what did patrol miss, and what could they have done to prevent it, and I have no doubt this is what every single mountain that performs avalanche mitigation is doing right now. If the answer were simply to close or post warnings on any terrain that would fall under “considerable” risk or above in the backcountry, they’d be doing exactly that.
 

James

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I'm thinking recent is in the last week or so, of course depending on skier traffic and a whole host of other things.

You can feel it under your skis. There isn't the compaction from skiers that you get after a slope is open for a while.
Well that’s at least two metrics- skier compaction and when the closed area was opened. But “weeks”? We’re talking in bounds.
Had this area not been skied much this season?
The metric of after a recent snowfall - since this is inbounds, after recent might mean first to ski new snow.
 

fatbob

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Interesting thread. The sort answer is move to Europe and spend a season or two skiing here. You'll soon get used to the ambiguity of having terrain that is adjacent to groomers yet is in no way "officially controlled" i,e, you make totally your own decisions. And what that means in practice is that there is a bunch of stuff you safely partition off into "low risk" because of mitigating circumstances and stuff/circumstances you think of as "hell no". Then you think hard about everything else and keep your wits about you.

Now I sorta take the same mentality to US inbounds except with a sizeable adjustment for has this been bombed/skier compacted etc etc? But it does mean that my first action in a new chute or face will usually be a "chicken traverse" to see if anything is moving. If It's over 30 deg I don't want to be skiing the convex line and more generally I have little problem with a few yahoos beating me for fresh tracks on a specific line at that sort of gradient.
 

Lauren

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What you’re proposing sounds like second-guessing those on the mountain with both the most experience and data on the current hazards, which I don’t think is especially useful. If patrol were to publish their own report, I expect you’d find it looks quite different on any terrain that they’ve actually opened.

The better question to ask, when there is an incident, is what did patrol miss, and what could they have done to prevent it, and I have no doubt this is what every single mountain that performs avalanche mitigation is doing right now. If the answer were simply to close or post warnings on any terrain that would fall under “considerable” risk or above in the backcountry, they’d be doing exactly that.

IMO, it is extremely useful to question and second-guess what is going on. One of the major decision-making errors is the "expert halo"; i.e. trusting someone that has more experience and knowledge than yourself, solely because they have more experience and knowledge. I would find it better to ask questions BEFORE an incident occurs to try to prevent an incident from ever occurring. If you see anything that is unsettling, try to learn why those experts don't find it unsettling...It might be something that they missed.

I do agree that it's important to debrief and learn afterwards, but I do not think it's "better" to ask questions after the fact. Questions before the fact could prevent those unfortunate events from ever occurring.

I do want to note that this isn't saying to argue that something is safe to ski when patrollers or others that marked it as unsafe. Rather, it's the exact opposite, if you think something might be unsafe, there is nothing wrong with second guessing anyone that has marked it as okay to ski.
 
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Unpiste

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I do agree that it's important to debrief and learn afterwards, but I do not think it's "better" to ask questions after the fact.
This is not at all what I meant.

Telling people, effectively, to trust the backcountry report over local ski patrol and stay off any terrain with "considerable" risk is not useful. That's simply trusting experts with less data on the local conditions over the experts who's job it is to understand the specific terrain you're entering. It's a shortcut to not actually understanding the nuances of the local conditions.

Consequential terrain should always be approached with appropriate caution. Sometimes that means wearing a beacon. Other times, that may mean taking a different line and, if something seems surprising or unexpected about the conditions, discussing with patrol. There are no "short answers".
 

Lauren

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Thank you for clarifying. I think we're on the same page.

I do think reading the avalanche bulletins for the resort's area can be very informative and helpful in making decisions. If you're making decisions based on that, you're probably making more conservative decisions since they're talking about uncontrolled slopes. This would not be in lieu of talking to patrol, and reading resort reports. Sounds like we both read karlo's post about taking avy advisories into account very differently.
 

fatbob

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Surely you don't take any general assessment as reason to ignore Patrol's asssessment and duck a rope but you can use it to validate/triangulate why patrol's assessment of fitness to open stacks up. And then making a more conservative personal decision can never be wrong.

The real red flag for me in the reports of the Silver incident were not the snowfall or wind absolutely but the fact that Patrol has not even traversed over to the area in question and it was opening for the first time that season. Because neither of the latter mitigate the 2 indicators of risk in the former.
 

Unpiste

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Thank you for clarifying. I think we're on the same page.

I do think reading the avalanche bulletins for the resort's area can be very informative and helpful in making decisions. If you're making decisions based on that, you're probably making more conservative decisions since they're talking about uncontrolled slopes. This would not be in lieu of talking to patrol, and reading resort reports. Sounds like we both read karlo's post about taking avy advisories into account very differently.
This is also going to vary significantly between locations.

Even though the areas I normally ski have plenty of high consequence avalanche terrain, I have a hard time imagining a situation where the answer isn’t simply that in the few minutes it would take to talk to patrol, the terrain will see so much skier traffic that any remaining hazards are mitigated nearly immediately. Skiing other areas, there have definitely been spots where I wanted to take the conservative line, because the terrain was both out of the way and low traffic.
 

karlo

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What you’re proposing sounds like second-guessing those on the mountain with both the most experience and data on the current hazards, which I don’t think is especially useful. If patrol were to publish their own report, I expect you’d find it looks quite different on any terrain that they’ve actually opened.

The better question to ask, when there is an incident, is what did patrol miss, and what could they have done to prevent it, and I have no doubt this is what every single mountain that performs avalanche mitigation is doing right now. If the answer were simply to close or post warnings on any terrain that would fall under “considerable” risk or above in the backcountry, they’d be doing exactly that.
The thought of my post being construed as second-guessing came to mind, as second guessing those who were caught in the avalanche, which I do not mean to do. I hadn’t thought about it as possibly second guessing staff at the resort. I don’t mean that either. Second guessing has the connotation of right and wrong, will there be an avalanche or not? What I mean is that we each endeavor to be educated and informed. Then, we each determine for ourselves the level of risk we are willing to take, understanding that anyone’s and everyone’s, ours, local patrollers’, regional avy boards’ assessments can be right or wrong or both.
 
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karlo

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So, tragic news of another inbound avalanche.


As @4ster says, red flags. My feeling is, inbounds in the States, where both piste and offpiste is avy controlled, then opened, red flags is something that resorts should pay attention to. All risk can’t be eliminated. But, right after a weather event, terrain is opened without confirmation of its avy safety? Or, maybe the did confirm (post mitigation), but not good enough.

As was previously stated, regional avy risk assessments do not apply to resorts, which have local conditions. But, the resort operator ought to know its own playground.

What self-assessed risk level is the threshold resorts use to open up terrain? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? “It depends” and “none of the above” can’t possibly be on the multiple choice list, can it?
 

4ster

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^
I hope no one is suggesting that ski areas keep terrain closed until it is deemed 100% safe because that is impossible.
shit happens and the best ski area operators can do is to help make their guests more aware of the risk and possible consequences. Threads like this help with that awareness.
Again, the mountain environment is not Disneyland.
 

karlo

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hope no one is suggesting that ski areas keep terrain closed until it is deemed 100%
Hope not as well. But, at the same time, skiers should be educated consumers. Resorts are mitigating and deciding when and when not to open. It’s fair that this be an open process and that we know their criteria. Otherwise, they perhaps should do as EU does and not raise expectations??
 

jmeb

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4 out of 6 skier/snowboarder avalanche deaths have been inbounds this year.

Whoa.
 

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