[leo]

I really didn't expect this thread to produce anything good. However I appreciated Powerdave's post and link to the structure article. I had put the lemons out of my mind. We were in CA skiing a few weeks ago. Dug a pit and recognized poor structure 3 of 5 lemons were present, we abandoned the line. I had not checked any forecasts for that area when we were in CA. When I got home out of curiosity I searched and found the Sierra Avalanche center their advisory for that day.

[Matthew]

[brianbauer]

i know nothing about Ava's and don't ski off-piste, but I know something of shoulders.
1. the first time is always the hardest to reset
2. if you do it once, its 80% you will do it again if you remain active after recovery
3. you need to know how to reset it yourself, or you will be rendered half useless and it intense pain. for anyone who has not put out a shoulder, umm, it hurts, alot.

the following technique was told to me by the team doctor for Washington Huskies. use it. 50%+ ER doctors don't know how to reset they do wacky things like put you face down prone and hang weights from your wrists. i've been to ER is various places 6 or so times for shoulder(before I learned to reset myself).
My last field test of this was in the state champs road cycling race after piling up at 40mph. had busted ribs too, but that's not the point. do this:

1. sit down
2. bring knee(on injured side) towards your chest with feet on ground
3. now you need to lock the fingers of both hands together while embracing your knee. kind of like you are hugging your bent knee
4. now relax. let the tension out of your back and gently let your weight pull pressure on your hands.
5. you will feel your shoulders roll forward, and this is just what you want

to execute step 3, you will need to use your good hand to get your bad arm into place. if you don't, you are a better man than I am.

Yes it hurts like a bastard, but the feeling of getting it back in is better than any christmas present. it will also prevent shock from setting in, and will enable you to function. best to then tuck your arm into a waist strap because it is still highly unstable.

hope this tip helps somebody. it helped me, so I am passing it along
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New Jersey by way of Vermont

[thornton]

[icelanticskier]

simulskiing is something that i've never been a fan of and something that i do not partake in. skiing one at a time to the next safe haven and waiting for yer partner is another story.

skiing in poor viz is a tricky call in and of itself and something that i really only have experience with skiing in very stable conditions or as an exit to abort a tour.

when viz is bad, communication with yer partner is just that much more important. i did have an incident recently at the gulf of slides on mt washington in gully #2, a 900 vert 40 degree slope with ok viz. i talked with my much less experienced partner and told him my intentions. after i put a ski cut in, i told him and pointed to my stop/waiting point below and that i'd wave him down. well after my cut, i was skiing some very nice maritime boot top pow down towards said spot, and wouldn't ya know it, the little bugger was skiing down behind me. let's just say he won't be doing that again, at least not with me. he told me he just got excited cuz the snow looked so good.

now, the conditions were stable enough where i wasn't too worried, however there is a certain way that i personally like to move about in the BC and it may not be the same as the next guy, we all have our styles.

now obviously i wasn't there on gobblers dealing with the low viz, tricky snowpack, partner dynamics, and am not making ANY judgements from 2400 miles away, just my thought's that's all.

rog

[t-dawg]

I have not yet chimed in on this – as one of the participants in the “third slide” – because it did not have the same major implications of the other two slides, nor do I often chime in anyway. But now that things have calmed down a bit – and everyone in the other two slides is “ok” I will go ahead here, since some very respected people seem interested.

Since we were also on main gobblers on Saturday, this observation from that night may be relevant:

"a posse of 5-6 of us went up gobblers and with a couple of other folks up there skied many of the lines on it. I dug a couple of quick hand pits and of course there was the near-ground facets and a solid slab on top, but I couldn't actually get the slab to fail on the facets; it was slightly above that, and only with a fair bit of effort and not a very clean/energetic shear. we were skiing shots >30 degrees (off the ridge), and "nothing happened". We discussed skiing Alan's gully as a home run, but the higher exposure there, terrain-trappi-ness of it, and lack of perceived islands of safety (clumps of trees that are more prevalent when entering the more "main shots")) along with what I think was the anniversary encouraged us to traverse over to the cabin shot instead, then do a mellower entrance to W. facing, far-right main gobblers. Again, however, there was no action. Lucky? I don't know."

I think that our third run tooks us into the skier's left side of wow's slide, but I need to go up there to confirm.

And this is my total observation from Sunday night that was sent along with a power point of the (poor quality due to cell phone) pictures that were posted on The Club site:

"Sunday we skied 2 runs on raymond glade then one on e. facing raymond shoulder, then climbed to baker pass and up towards Gobs a bit to ski "paradise" (new name to me) as our home run, which avalanched with a ski cut.

On our initial ascent of the ridge to skier's right/lookers left of The Glade we had one small whoomph and some hollow snow on the ridge. It also appeared from a distance that our tracks from Saturday that had polluted the Gobbler's "ridge" (and in the bowl) had blown in somewhat. So perhaps some extra wind loading, but it’s hard to believe it was enough to tip the balance, esp for the main gobblers slide today?

As we skied our first run down the steep aspens at the bottom of the Raymond glade we triggered the world's smallest avalanche: 8" crown, ran about 20 feet total (not vertical) that was initiated on a turn over a 40-ish degree rollette.

We then skied what I call the Raymond shoulder down into Mill A; it’s SE facing with a rib that has a bit of a northerly tilt so better snow. It is so exposed that it was a little nerve-racking, but we talked about it a bit and decided it would be ok given the aspect and relatively moderate angle, but I still roared down it as fast as I could with all my senses heightened. We climbed up to Baker pass and then climbed eastward (towards Gobblers) a couple hundred yards to a flat spot where skier 1 said is a standard WPG landing zone. We discussed this at length; tho it appeared that higher up towards gobblers might offer a lower-angle entrance, skier 1 - who knew it best - said it was more committing, our perspective was a bit deceptive, the entrance that we were looking into was the safer one, and it looked quite reasonable (scrubby trees and 30-ish degrees), based on what we had already skied today and yesterday, and there seemed to be reasonable escape options (??) into trees on both sides so we decided to enter as per the picture. I had skied this run earlier in the season but had entered from the opposite side of the shot - via the gobs skin track - and felt that this was a reasonable way to end the day.

skier 1 skied down a few turns then busted right, through the woods, and into the "main" shot; which overall was the most conservative line. skier two (I was actually on a board) then went straight down the line and stopped prematurely at the edge because I knew that I might have to blast really hard across the flats/up a rise to continue. skier 3 then ski cut through the woods a lot higher than skier 1 (steeper there) and triggered the slide that ran down the main path to skier's right, and took out skier 1's tracks. So it was a ski cut, tho of course he didn't know that it would rip, and skier 1 - waiting at the bottom - felt compelled to scramble out of the way, tho as it turned out he had stopped out of the runout zone, which was purposeful on his part.

stats:
9300'
NW facing
2-3' crown
ran 7-800 vertical?
75' wide?
failed on near-ground facets (assume from the visual of lots of dirt etc showing on the crown)
crown at 40 degrees? Just a guess; didn't go back up to check. where we skied was more like mid-30's?

although it went fast, it didn't seem to me like "the whole thing ripped"; the debris was only a couple feet deep and the majority of the slope remained intact (vs the gobblers slide, which -even from a distance, as skier 1 noticed, looked a helluva lot scruffier than it had the previous day before we realized it had slid), so it sorta seemed to me that it was the snow on top of the run that ran down over the rest of the snow? I don't know that tho. In any case, I don't think it would have been a full or deep burial had anyone gotten caught.

with regards to the main gobblers slide....Saturday we skied a bunch of skier-runs down the left shots of gobblers, then for our last run we went to the summit and discussed the concept of skiing "the main run" quite a bit. I had dug a quick hand pit just off the summit and even though with my pole I could feel the near-ground facets I couldn't get the column to fail there, but looking down that bigass open slope that is a little terrain-trappy as it goes I had an uncomfortable feeling about it as did Colin and we agreed to bail farther right. we went down a little ways then fully bailed over to the cabin shot, traversing a benchy thing that still made me a bit nervous. Once in the cabin shot we then realized that there were guys skinning above us in what is normally the wind-scoured area, so we didn't dillydally; we pointed 'em and tore down to the bottom. Then suffered up the steepest skin track I've seen to get back up to the cabin/main gobs ridgeline (I think near where the summer trail starts traversing) to take a gentle-ish ride back down into the bottom of the main gobblers run and home. I relay that last bit because seeing those guys up there skinning was another one of those "things I wouldn't do" - and perhaps the ridiculous skin track is indicative of their experience? but as Bruce pointed out it's nice to have plenty of slope testers around to test theories, and I sorta figured that if those guys could get away with that, at that point, then.....perhaps at least a pale green light?

But apparently not, because all hell seemed to break loose today. So it therefore begs the big question: was there some sort of big change from yesterday to today? or were we all just getting lucky and missing the triggers previously and those triggers got provoked today? A little bit of wind, but not enough? a little bit of heat, but that shouldn't matter at that elevation, north facing? (and snow-riding quality did not deteriorate). so I kinda think the latter.....there were STILL - 10 days after any significant snow, esp in the MC area - a few things hanging in the balance, and today coincidentally three of them got triggered, all very near each other.

[trustolium]

[wow]

[OAG]

"just lucky I guess".

Luck is good, probably essential, for a long career in the mountains but it's not just luck.

In wow's case he was doing plenty of things to get the odds on his side both before the slide released and during the ride as well.

Like counting cards in blackjack, you can get busted on any hand but still try to keep your bets reasonable given what you are holding and your understanding of the state of the deck.

[keithermadness]

[icelanticskier]

[AT Apostle]

In regards to skiing one at a time, I think it is a lot easier to preach it than to practice it. First off, it is slows you down by a factor of how ever many people you have in your group - two people will ski half the speed as one, four people will be one forth as slow as a single. On a nice powder day, especially if nothing is moving, it is easy to get frustrated and jump the gun.

It also means that you kind of have to stay close together so you can watch each other, which means skiing smaller shots, like ten turns or so. More frustration. Having one person ski 1,000 vert, then the second person trigger a slide and get buried right off the bat perhaps hundreds of feet above the would-be rescuer means the rescuer is going to have to switch over to climbing mode (skins?), and climb back up, which means the search isn't even going to start for 15-20 minutes, at least.

I like leap-frogging in shorter pitches where one person follows the other as soon as they are tucked into a safe spot. The hard part about this is that it is not very sociable and it requires each person to make their own calls on which line to ski and where to stop, plus you have to keep your partner(s) in mind as far as not triggering anything above them, stopping where they can see you, etc.. When it works, it is great, but it takes more practice than it might seem.

When it comes to luck, basic safe travel protocol (skiing one at a time, spreading out, stopping below people, stopping in safe spots, etc.) vastly increases your odds.

[powderpond]

AT.
I like your point about a person getting caught up high with nobody around to help until somebody decides to put on their skins, hike up and look for your body. This means the one before the last guy and the last guy really need to work together to protect each other, especially on long tempting shots that have no obvious breaks.

[homemadesalsa]

Hey all- very informative and educational reading about what is going on down there. Whew. I don't envy your snowpack this year, although some years I do.

Wow- hope you heal fast. Good retrospective on conditions on Gobblers.

I am following the tenet this year that structure trumps when we have this deep slab problem. Hard to contain the "wanting", but gotta see the long haul, eh? Working with the stability wheel is helpful, but high strength and low energy can lull me into complacency. Good to hear from the OAG what he thinks about the hardness required for bridging.

One followup question for you all- anyone want to write me up a synopsis for the Review? Great discussion- one more riff on resisting human factor.

thanks
salsa

[Grant]

I don't know much about this sort of thing, but a guy who skis 100-150 days a season and is acutely aware of the dangers in his backyard hills to the point of reporting on them so others can make educated decisions, probably has pretty good judgment.

Glad to hear your ride didn't end much worse, wow. The snowpack sounds downright scary in Utah right now.
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In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. ~William Blake