Looks like a pretty low angle slope with plenty of trees, the kind of place you might chance skiing during iffy conditions.
Wasn't buried all that deep, but it was enough unfortunately.
Looks like a pretty low angle slope with plenty of trees, the kind of place you might chance skiing during iffy conditions.
This, along with the fatalities of some "experts" in the backcountry skiing world it was keeps me from dabbling in backcountry skiing. I have enough voices in my head without taking these kind of chances. Where is the big chicken emoji?
To be fair... the slope that set the slide off was 37 degrees which is basically the sweet spot for avalanches. If you want to ski low angle, you need to keep it in the 25-degree range which gives you a few degrees of mistake before you're probably in trouble.
One thing that this report, and the recent Silverton incident has been a stark reminder of is the importance of slope angle and micro-terrain features. I was skiing an area yesterday that if you look on CalTopo or other shaded angle maps, nothing is above 27-degrees. Measured with a slope meter, easy to find isolated features in the 32-36 degree range which could easily trigger a slide.
Re: trees, they have to be really freaking tight to anchor snow (enough that they’re probably not enjoyable to ski). I get that people use the absence of vegetation to recognize slopes that are super slide-prone, but they can definitely happen in tree-covered areas. And then the trauma potential is quite high.