Definitely worth the watch and read
http://www.henrysavalanchetalk.com/a...foy-tarentaise
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Definitely worth the watch and read
http://www.henrysavalanchetalk.com/a...foy-tarentaise
That didn't really look like a safe spot for those first 4 to bunch up. I read the text first and was expecting a more obvious "island of safety".
I'm curious why they skied such a short pitch and regrouped there. Wouldn't it make more sense to ski the whole thing one at a time? I'm not judging, I don't know what their plan was, maybe they were going to traverse farther skiers' right?
that island of safety was a victim of climate change when sea level rose and swallowed it whole in three seconds
I guess the shooting cracks in the traverse line from the previous 4 skiers were not an obvious clue as well
Island of what??? Easy to be armchair QB, but that's sure no island, and no safety. That's a "We-can't-ski-and-have-sore-legs-from-100-foot-run" rest spot.
Big open slopes like that have 'slide' written all over them, esp at that time of day. It's probably steeper than the video shows == prime slide paths. They probably should not have been so shocked that it went big. Aaand ... I'd probably edit out the 'oh-fck musak' in the background too. It doesn't add anything.
They are going to sell a massive crap-load of them avy airbags in Europe. Then, we can get some real statistics from the impending mass-stupidity that is about to happen in touring.
Good thing everyone made it out. Being the jong that I am, I'd probably be there in the wash cycle too!
I'm starting to get cranky and talk like I'm an expert :)
Huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by puregravity
They already did and people are less than thrilled at the massive ABS recall and the Mammut valve issue so I'm not sure they really will sell that much more.Quote:
Originally Posted by puregravity
Well, it looks like midday from the north aspect and shadows. Perhaps the north aspect negates the midday issue (warming cycle). I'll bet the upflow is happening from the sun baked slopes below.Quote:
Originally Posted by klar
I'm a firm believer in getting out early, esp on big slopes like that.
And the ABS recall is going to slow sales -- Why? Has any recall, anywhere, actually slowed sales of anything?
But I'm hypothesizing, so go ahead and say what you think.
Their regroup spot did not seem much from the angle of the camera, but that is all we can see. In their defense, the avalanche did seem to flow around it at first, so they may have been on some minor high ground. As the webpage says, possibly a safe-ish regroup for smaller avalanches, but not a very wide across and downslope propagating persistent weak layer like this. It is not normal for an entire mountainside to release like that with a light trigger unless you have a specific type of avalanche problem.
Were they shooting cracks? Looked more like where skiers had dragged their uphill pole. I can't fathom anyone would continue onto a steep open slope with cracking of that nature. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt there. Not cracks.Quote:
Originally Posted by srface_hoar
From my view they looked like cracking and seemed to indicate instability.
Definitely cracks.
I would have felt very negative about skiing that slope having seen those cracks develop and would have whined for another way down, if there was one.
Reminder to find true safe spots.
Those are pole drags. Look again, they follow the traverse into the slope perfectly, aligned with each undulation.
Nah, not cracks in my opinion either.
Recliner chair obs
Seems like a bad place to regroup and last cutter cut higher out of track.
Look again, you can see additional cracks develop as it propagates out across the slope. They are identical to the cracks already there.
Strong winds and fresh snow the day before the slide, falling on top of a thick layer of facets. Espace Killy posted an avalanche risk of 4 and the pisteurs there were very negative about the conditions, but maybe they've much less tolerance for careless tourists than Ste Foy. These people don't seem to have a guide with them, and the guidebook I have here observes that the north face of Foglietta isn't a good place to be in uncertain snow conditions.
Seems like they didn't bother to do much research before heading out. Anyone else able to follow the google hangout thing that Henry's doing? Can't see or hear it from here, but it probably has better information about what happened.
Pole drags would have to be very high on the upper crack. When it rips out it does so on the cracksQuote:
Originally Posted by AaronWright
Not that it matters, but watching in fullscreen HD you can clearly see the skier with green pants making that lower drag mark. The skier that triggers the slide goes out and it fractures perpendicular to those marks and there is no propagation toward the cameraman when the slide starts from the fall line fracture. I don't think there was a visible clue for them. That doesn't mean there weren't all sorts of other red flags and the regroup area was obviously a bad idea.
Did they dig a pit?
Did they do anything to see if they could get a slide while they were all still at the top? Perhaps something like a ski cut, group jump on a spot, other stupid looking but possibly effective activity to get a slide to trigger?
There is a rock outcrop just below the video guy, perhaps a good place to do a drop-to-steep and see the stability.
Just think it would have turned out a lot better if they were able to test the snowpack with more than a genteel traverse ...
... but why does everybody regroup so tight? I thought the idea was to keep a good separation in order to mitigate everyone being caught in the same slide?
How steep was it? Given how video often flattens the slope visually, it probably is a good 35 degrees. Any large open slope at 35 degrees is a suspect.
Pole drags. But yikes, that must have been scary just standing there with your thumb up your ass as the world comes crashing down upon you. For some reason I now have "For whom the bell tolls" stuck in my head.
Glad the injuries were not life threatening and that nobody died.
Did you notice how in the periphery, skiers' left, on the camera view that there was propagation and snow coming down? It looks like from behind where the cameraman was standing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronWright
pole drags,Quote:
Originally Posted by rob stokes
What I was wondering is if that hump down in the flats is a deposition from previous slides.
He was in a safe spot. Camera guys learn to have a knack for picking good spots.Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronWright
Not going to comment on their decision making since I wasn't there. But my video from last season may help answer some of the question you may have, and give you other views. They dropped in further down the ridge (Skiers Right 30 meters) from the slide path we skied.
When we arrived, the group before us (with a guide), set off a slide. The guide and 1 client were caught in the slide, but were both ok. I was pretty terrified to step on the face regardless of skiing the bed surface. But after watching several others ski, and clear the hang fire around the path, we decided to drop. In my video, the slide stopped on a shelf. In their video, the slide went over the rock/cliff ban to the bottom.
In my video at .55 you will see us re-group on what we considered a "safe zone" on a shelf far skiers left of the slide path below rocks. We skied 1 with 1 person on the slope at a time.
In my video at 1:01, you will see the rock face in the middle of the slope (we came down lookers right side, they skied lookers left of the rock/cliff ban). This is the same rock face that's shown at the end of their video with the breakdown of the slide. Overall it's a tricky slope that starts at about 45 degrees with many convex rollovers and trigger points. I don't think they should have been hanging out in an open bowl, and they should not have had more than 1 person on the slope at a time. But.........I wasn't part of their decision making process.
Hope this helps....
http://vimeo.com/89083793
Thanks. It doesQuote:
Originally Posted by dhklauer
Posted some of this on the Snow for the Euros thread. This is a very big open slope but navigation isn't completely straightforward- there are a few cliffs which could catch you out depending on the line you choose. I'd guess it is a sustained 30-35 degrees or so (45 sounds it but high to me but there may be steeper bits which I haven't skied.). For a slide like that, I would struggle to think of any true safe spots on the slope until you get to the bottom and out of the run-out area for a slide. But because it is so long and because of the complexity it isn't something you could sensibly do in one pitch unless everyone was very familiar with it.
So all that adds up to something to avoid if you have any doubts about snow conditions. It's a fantastic ski if conditions are right though.
Also, it is quite well away from the resort - 30-4mins skin from the top lift and it takes you down to a village which is a bus ride away from St Foy. So not somewhere that the resort patrollers would see themselves as responsible for, I don't think
Hope that helps
Did anyone dig a pit. Group of 5 hitting a slope like that without a pit dig in cat 3 avy rating is odd. No? No ones mentioning the pit test, so just bringing it up again.
It's a dumb question - because the answer is obviously no. Along with Duh!
The video is now "private".
Listened to the thing Henry did. Seems to have been a group with a guide and full cert instructor at the back. So two professionals qualified to lead the route. Henry stressed two things. First, local obs up the road in the Espace Killy suggested only smaller releases. Second, they felt that this was consistent with the rating of 3 so local obs seemed to back up the forecast.
Henry also suggested that the island of safety they used is larger than is apparent from the vid and their use of it is consistent with his read of the conditions: i.e. localised skier trigger slabs are possible but likely no more than that.
Re pits. In hundreds of days skiing off piste in Europe, I have never seen anyone dig a pit outside of an avalanche course. Similarly, I have never dug one myself other than a quick and dirty to confirm something I already strongly suspected. I am not sure what location you would pick for a pit to gauge stability in that location.
Curious as to what the reduction method calculation for that slope would have been, not having seen the bulletin. I strongly suspect the score would have been 1. Strikes me that you could judge the scoring in two ways - either you could score for the 30 degree slope they skied. Or you could take the risk of triggering the steeper part of the slope and score yourself for a steeper slope. The latter seems more prudent and that's probably the main thing I am taking away from this. That and your own observations and reading of the forecast may periodically turn out to be bollocks.
Other than that, there but for the grace of God etc. I hope all are out of hospital no and are not too badly shaken. I am not really looking forward to the handful of days I have this season. It is clearly going to be tricky.
Euro vs US pit/forecast reliance would be an interesting slide zone thread in it's own right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorilla
weird. I don't know shit but I would never pick a literal island in the middle of the slide zone. you're basically saying that you know how big a potential slide will be and that it will not eat your island.
That is a valid exercise. However using the absence of recent significant avalanche activity to verify if local danger is consistent with the forecast regional rating is unreliable and not really recommended when you have a persistent weak layer. With PWL's, the absence of signs of instability is not an indicator or stability. And if you get it wrong, the consequences can be much larger, as seen in that video.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorilla
If you have a snowpack capable of producing an avalanche like that, then you are entrenched in shut-down mode: skiing small or very low angle slopes. The presence of a weak layer like that should be no mystery.
Does anyone have a link to the avy bulletin for that day? I'm curious to see whether they called this a Persistent Weak Layer or a new wind slab...
Indeed! Hadn't known that this was a guided group. My impression is that guides working in their local area rarely dig pits (when they are out with clients anyway) because they have actually watched the snowpack develop over the season and they spend a lot of time chatting with their guide buddies about current conditions.Quote:
Originally Posted by PNWbrit
I have heard it said in Euroland that if you are relying on a pit (rather than all the other info you have been gathering) to decide whether or not to go, you shouldn't go.
I think you need to be asking yourself why your pit is or ia not adding to the knowledge you should have gained from the bulletin. I understand things are different in the US. I am told that they are more granular than the US equivalent and cover a smaller area.
The second thing is the difficulty of obtaining a representative sample of the problem slope. There are two angles her. First heterogeneity - I would expect you would have to dig quite a few pits on that St F slope to get a good read on how dodgy it was. Second, the difficulty of digging in a suitably representative location at all.
That being the case I would rather feed data into the Munter formula, trust the bulletin and cross my fingers.
So while I learned to do a full profile, which was a reallt useful exercise, and can do a rutschblock etc, my instructors taught those tk show how snow works rather than in the expectation I would use them.
Of course my ski bumming days are over, I am a fat desk jockey and am probably no longer current but that's a reasonable reflection of practice only a few years ago.
Some places in the US are like Europe with lots of people out and about, lots of available info, a good, accurate, comprehensive bulletin/forecast, etc. (like the Wasatch). Other places in the US are in the middle of nowhere with only about 5 people touring regularly, with no available info, and a limited or nonexistent bulletin. Gotta know how to be your own forecaster if you want to ride in those places. Digging pits is certainly part of that equation if you want to ride steep stuff. (I'm sure there are places like this in Europe as well). :)
Depending on where exactly you are the bulletins in Europe can be very good and provide very detailed info regarding snow pack and local variations. I do dig pits with some regularity just out of curiosity and have never really found something I wasn't expecting to find from reading the bulletin, this is for Tyrol. The people who make the bulletins dig a lot of pits to come up with their ratings. I think the idea here is that the bulletins are good enough that most people will fair better with Munter or StopOrGo or one of those methods (based on the danger rating) than with having to dig and interpret their own snow pits, so education largely focusses on those strategies. There is a nice tool here that shows the pits by the forecasters, as well as any someone else does and enters. You can enter your own data as well. http://www.lawis.at/profile/
One guy dug out two buried survivors 1 km downslope?
Bet he's getting a lot of invites to tour.
jeez splat you don't know euro-trash eh?
that just makes him more appealling to the crazies !!!
I bet he charges more to go for a ride in a slide ...
farkin good thing they don't have turbo snowmobiles eh?
I'm just sayin' the dude's a stud for the great rescue job.
Are you sayin' you want to start a backwoods ratbagger bc turbo sledder boarder fad in the Alps?
You'll need plaid flannel shirts. And those hats that go over your ears.
Do all the guests read the detailed avy bulletins or know the snowpack history? Or is that knowledge all encapsulated within the guide?
How much do guests participate in the decision to ski a face?
Would digging a pit encourage a better shared knowledge and balanced decision making?
Just blue-skying here ... unwavering trust in a guide/heli-operation is what has led some groups into trouble.
It depends?Quote:
Originally Posted by puregravity
Clients may know absolutely nothing and be doing this as once in their lifetime or be as knowledgeable or nearly so as the guide.
See above earlier comments about euro pit digging. I'd say that it'd be quite unusual for a guide to dig a pit on that slope in Europe.
And that perhaps Some guides would actually not even want to dig a pit with some clients, on some trips and that some clients would expect that the guide wouldn't need to do so in order to guide them safely.
And as to your last point.... was it the Wallowa slide last year that perhaps clients not following instruction from guides possibly might have caused the problem? Apologies if I've mixed it up with another accident.