Well thanks to daily seances and sacrifices to the weather gods, we are finally having a winter. Yes! In terms of avalanche safety, though, we can’t take our recent (reliable, good, regular!) snowfall out of the context of the early-season drought. With such a shallow snowpack from November, December, and into January, cold weather, snow physics, and Mother Nature conspired to leave a rotting house of cards on the ground. Where we might usually have 10cm of depth hoar (notoriously bitchy, weak grains that love to let go when you least want them to), most of the Front Range snowpack is sitting on 40cm or more of the cup-shaped, persistent grains. That means no matter how much snow we get (within reason; I’m not counting on a Mount Baker late season!), we’re sliding atop a fundamentally weak snowpack until spring.
I’m writing this as much to remind myself as to share the idea with anybody else. It’s not really news, anyway–the bulletins have been hammering this all year in one way or another. We saw last week in the unfortunate fatality on Cameron Pass a couple riders get surprised by what probably appeared to be a relatively stable snowpack. “Scary moderate” or “scary considerable” are the catch phrases forecasters might use: a snowpack that gives stable feedback (no whumpfs, no cracks, even pit tests return stable results), but then hit just the wrong spot and wham–huge, unexpected, deadly avalanche. For the past three weeks forecasters have used words like “scary,” “unpredictable,” and “lethal.” We should be listening up!
We toured off Vail pass last week and stuck to 25- to 30-degree terrain, except for one shot that had a couple undulations up to 32-33 degrees. It was the same day as the death up on Cameron–on the way home I just happened to call a buddy who’d done the accident report up there. He described the incident and the terrain, which sounded like a slightly more aggressive tour than we’d done, albeit 50 miles away.
Damn, it got me to thinking–had we gone too close to the line? Had we just rolled the dice and gotten lucky? Our 25-degree shots were fine, I’m sure. But man, that second run…we ascended on a safe rib to the climber’s right (on just a few inches of snow above rock and tundra; see pic below), then skied a shallow couloir. We’d gotten a whumpf on a 28-30 section below, but nothing moved. As we went higher we stomped a few times at the edge of the couloir and again, nothing moved. Were we just missing the “sweet spot,” or was it truly stable? We skied it without incident, so it’s easy to say it was stable, but did we just get lucky?
Forgive my soft-headed tech skills, but above you can see our first shot on the left–really mellow terrain, with big scary stuff further left. From there we ascended the bulge on the contour lines (the “safe rib”), which was wind-scoured from seasonal west winds. The day we skied, however, came after a storm with predominately north/northwest winds, so the storm snow was more pressed directly into the gully, rather than cross- or top-loaded. The screen shot comes from CalTopo.com, which is a free and useful website (use it for tour planning!). The slope shading estimates slope angle, yellow being 27-29 degrees, light orange being 30-31 degrees, and slightly darker orange 32-34 degrees. The darkest red/orange shade is 35-45 degrees.
Like most avalanche “calls,” there’s probably not a right or wrong decision. Risk acceptance comes into it, too. I asked the buddy with whom I spoke (a full-time avalanche professional), “We skied similar terrain today, up to 32 degrees max. You think it would’ve moved in an event like Cameron Pass?”
“Yeah, probably,” he said. Woh. Slap to the head. The feature we were skiing was a much more isolated gully than a big alpine face, but still–look at the topo map and you can see a ride from the top would’ve been long and with a bit of a transition at the bottom, on which snow could’ve piled up pretty good.
Hearing my bud say that definitely gave me pause. He continued, “Terrain like that is just rolling the dice right now. I mean, the odds are still way in your favor, but hit the wrong spot…”
So it’s Russian Roulette (is that capitalized?), just with 50 or 100 or 500 slots in the chamber. Is that my game? I’m not so sure.
So here’s shot #2. The snow above me is pretty shallow (the obviously wind-affected stuff), less than a foot, a thin wind-skin atop facets on tundra. You can see the rocks on the looker’s left; that’s where the terrain steepens, but again, less than a few inches of snow on it. That left the creamy goodness you see in the middle. Maybe ankle-deep, wind-pressed into the gully. Really, really nice skiing…but if you got it moving you’d be sliding over rocks, airbag/Avalung or not. Worth the risk? Was it indeed risky? Maybe I’ll try to get my buddy to head back up there and we can evaluate in person.
It’s easy to forget we’re always rolling the dice to some degree–it’s backcountry skiing or climbing or whatever–but it’s nice to know the dice are loaded way, way, way in your favor and the cost of losing isn’t The Chop, maybe just a lost ski or busted leg. Certain death, though, that becomes an entirely different activity.
It’s a tough call, too, because look at the above photo. This is another shot from the day, 28 degrees, more like knee deep, shot number three…we never crossed another track all day. Pleasure centers in the brain going berserk! Problem is, modern neuroscience is beginning to unravel some of this stuff. Turns out having your pleasure centers going berserk doesn’t aid in making thoughtful, slow, logical decisions. See: Burning Man, high school, any movie with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in it.
Anyway, there’s some food for thought. I’ve been chewing on it for more than a week now. Great tour plan, terrain choices, travel techniques, snowpack evaluation? Or just lucky? When it comes to backcountry decision-making, I think being lucky is overrated, at least for me. I’ll take it, but it’s not how I want to be making it through the day.
Thoughts? Comments? Assurances of impending death? Leave word and enjoy the snow…just don’t let your pleasure centers bum-rush your gray matter and leave you nothing but luck. Unless you’re at Burning Man…then I say, “Go for it!”
