{"id":6024,"date":"2013-09-18T21:52:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T03:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=6024"},"modified":"2013-09-18T22:57:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T04:57:49","slug":"dumb-things-done-part-1-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/dumb-things-done-part-1-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumb Things Done Part 1 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Dumb things” is probably a little bit of a strong statement for what I hope these blog posts will be. Perhaps “Avalanche mistakes I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned from them” would have been a more appropriate title, but missing the eye-catching alliterative aspects of this one. I’ve only taken one ride in an avalanche, which happens to be the subject of this post, but I’ve had partners take a ride on two other occasions, which will be the subject of the next two posts in this series. <\/p>\n

It is my hope that these posts will at the very least offer something to the reader, as we approach another winter season.<\/p>\n

I’ve actually written about this incident before, but with the help of a photo I took last winter, I can now explain it better than I could before. This is the area in question: The shoulder of Decker Mountain just outside Blackcomb ski area in British Columbia.
\n\"Decker<\/a><\/p>\n

In the winter of 2002, when I was living in Whistler, things looked a little bit different. The sunlit ramp actually had a couple of rock steps in it, while the area in between the ramp and the curled cornice was actually cleaner than in this photo, more like a very skinny couloir. What you can’t see in this photo, due to the slope in the foreground, is the mellower bowl that all of this leads into.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As I said earlier, I was living in the area at the time, skiing every day. Before this slide, we had our most prolonged dry spell of the season, which meant a few days of rare sun during a highly snowy winter. With a stable coastal snowpack and a danger rating for multiple days of “low” all aspects and elevations, we had been skiing all over the place, as had everyone else. You couldn’t find even a heavy slough anywhere. That’s what made this slide so surprising. <\/p>\n

The intended route:
\n\"\" <\/p>\n

I started off by the yellow arrow, but before I could get off the ramp, the slab broke free. The fracture was small- only 25′ across and only a foot deep at the deepest part. But it was a hard slab, and it broke above me (the red line is the approximate crown).
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Since it was a hard slab, I couldn’t dig in. I couldn’t bail to the right, and I couldn’t make it to my exit on the left, either. So around the blue ‘X’, I made the only choice I had left- I pointed it straight, off the good-sized (60′ or so) cliff that I had no intention of hucking. But that’s what I did, landing somewhere around the orange asterisk. Thankfully there was more snow in the landing than there is in this photo, so I didn’t hit any rocks. The slide continued all around me, putting me in a washing machine of snow- but then it stopped, just as suddenly as it started. I found my gear, and skied straight to the bar.<\/p>\n

So what were my lessons? That’s probably the most frustrating part. There were literally hundreds of tracks at the same aspect and elevation- so how could I have known that the route I was taking was a highly localized pocket of windslab? To this day, I’m not sure what I would have done differently. What I did take from the incident, however, is a heightened awareness of my place on any given slope. Every step I take, I consider where I am, what will happen if the slope gives way, and what I’ll try to do if it does. <\/p>\n

Up next in part 2- a cornice fails thousands of feet above us at Thompson Pass, Alaska.<\/p>\n