Colorado Weather Discussion Thread

[Name Redacted]

STFU is the ultimate MMQB. Pounding his keyboard from high atop the front range, he can criticize anyone without leaving the comfort of his perch.

[fastfred]

STFU tell me is there anything in your life about which you are not the most knowledgeable person in the world? What the fuck is it that makes you so much more knowledgeable than the CAIC highway forecasters and other avalanche professionals?

hey now the guy has one day in this season

[Name Redacted]

I didn't expect Al to criticize CDOT, and he didn't. I also notice he didn't throw anyone under the bus.... But Al's a pretty sharp dude, and I'd imagine this was a tough day. Unless High Noon is setting off 4' fractures that are burying the 6th Alley Deck and Pali chairs are bouncing off the towers, it seems unlikely that the AB folks would be trying to force people out onto a closed and closing roadway, only to have them inch along through several miles of intermittent slide path between the ski area and relative safety. All that being said, it worked... So, sure, why not? Sounds like shit got a little real in SuCo for a while today, and the net of the decision making process was that no one got hurt. To that, everyone working up there today deserves a real pat on the back.

Man, it almost sounds as if you were there. Have you considered a career as a historical fiction author?

[Elkhound Odin]

STFU is the ultimate MMQB. Pounding his keyboard from high atop the front range, he can criticize anyone without leaving the comfort of his perch.

This is why he and Benny get along so well

[BFD]

If crested butte plans to open a lift do they say delayed opening or does closed mean no opening that day?

[goldenboy]

If crested butte plans to open a lift do they say delayed opening or does closed mean no opening that day?

If you're talking about the website, it isn't updated that often. I'd like to think that the high lift and NFL will both be open today.

[montanaskier]

Black rose in CB today?! Yikes

[BFD]

Yes the website says closed. I do not want to drive up there on a whim. Seems they could say delayed so you know they hope to open today

[goldenboy]

Yes the website says closed. I do not want to drive up there on a whim. Seems they could say delayed so you know they hope to open today

Yeah, yesterday was a bit of a junkshow. I didn't stay long.

Winds just picked up big time in the last 15 minutes, that won't bode well. Otherwise, they ran so many routes yesterday, they really should be able to get things open as long as the lifts don't get put on a wind hold.

[ASmileyFace]

Having to work today and tomorrow is a fucking tragedy. Please post stoke for all of us who arent getting after it!

[stfu&gbtw]

Lol... Boy, you all get touchy in a hurry!

I know the prof slid to the hog once... In 1984 or something. Either damaged or took out the patrol shack at the same time. It remains true that it hasn't happened like that since, and that the prof infrequently slides to the road, and very rarely to the parking lot.

Regardless, the point is this: using explosives and risking slide activity in the base area while it's populated should be avoided at all costs, and the circumstances that might require it are extremely rare, and would almost certainly preclude the idea that everyone can just drive home. Either the risk of the Prof sliding naturally is so severe that immediate control work is required, and therefore you would immediately evacuate the slide path - not send 2000+ people into it to move their cars; or the risk is not so severe, and therefore the egress issues should be addressed, people should leave when they have the ability to do so with relative certainty that they will be able to travel directly to safety, and control work should be completed when the ski area is clear.

Regarding bombing and crowd control, the parking lot might be in play, but it can be effectively evacuated by base area staff and ski patrol, and people can shelter in the A Frame and/or BML if required. While that's certainly not ideal, if the danger is so imminent that immediate evacuation of the slide path is required, the last thing you'd do is move 2000+ people from a comparitively safe location elsewhere on-mountain into a position directly in the slide path. Responding to a medical emergency might justify sending a small group into the slide path for as short a time as possible... But if the risk requires immediate mitigation and evacuation of the slide path, having people shuffling around the parking lot for an hour or so while trying to exit single file through the lower gate is not a reasonable response. And if the issues are not so imminent that immediate evac and mitigation is required, you would first focus on addressing the egress issues and coordinating assistance along the route so that when people did leave their path to safety would be more passable.

The worst possible outcome is having people injured, killed, or isolated by slide activity, whether naturally triggered or otherwise. From a site management perspective, this tactic only moves people into closer proximity of risk, with fewer opportunities for site control and emergency response, a broader potentially affected area, a greater number of secondary and tertiary risk factors (other slides, auto accidents, paniced behavior, etc.) and far less certainty about accounting for people.

[Danno]

Either the risk of the Prof sliding naturally is so severe that immediate control work is required, and therefore you would immediately evacuate the slide path - not send 2000+ people into it to move their cars; or the risk is not so severe, and therefore the egress issues should be addressed, people should leave when they have the ability to do so with relative certainty that they will be able to travel directly to safety, and control work should be completed when the ski area is clear.

Or, maybe, just maybe, the risk of the Prof sliding naturally is not so severe that immediate control work is required, but it is rising, such that it might be that severe as the snow continues to fall. And allowing people to stay until 4pm and leave as they see fit could put them at much greater risk.

I am 100% sure that nobody made the decision to close the Basin lightly, and that whether people were safer staying there or getting on the roads was a consideration. I am also 100% sure that nobody could ever convince you that others might make reasoned and correct decisions, with data they have and you don't, that contradict what you believe to be the prudent course of action.

[Kinnikinnick]

I'd like to be the first to nominate STFU to be put in charge of everything. As a former IT guy for New York Investment Banks he is uniquely qualified to make decisions on everything.

As he says just because its a historic snowstorm with Extreme Avalanche danger doesn't mean that the professor could slide and that CDOT and Abasin had any reason to make a decision to evacuate. He's spot on that its easier to search every car and create a new inpromtu system to ensure that everyone is out of the parking lot and stays out of the parking lot and out of the way of a potential climax avalanche before then presumably blasting the Prof to try to mitigate the danger.

Stop doubting the guy from New York, since he is from New York, he obviously knows more than the people from Colorado, who inherently are not from New York and therefore know less than someone from New York.

[fastfred]

I

Stop doubting the guy from New York, since he is from New York, he obviously knows more than the people from Colorado, who inherently are not from New York and therefore know less than someone from New York.

at least you know what your talking about

(ex) new yorkers are the smartest best most straight shooting people you'll ever meet the ny state public schools are the best in the country so you only develop the best, new yorkers know how to drive in traffic, place a food order without taking up space thinking about the menu while twenty people stand behind them, new yorkers know how to get it done, they know how to keep moving and not stick their finger in their ass like a midwesterner

[stfu&gbtw]

Or, maybe, just maybe, the risk of the Prof sliding naturally is not so severe that immediate control work is required, but it is rising, such that it might be that severe as the snow continues to fall. And allowing people to stay until 4pm and leave as they see fit could put them at much greater risk.

I am 100% sure that nobody made the decision to close the Basin lightly, and that whether people were safer staying there or getting on the roads was a consideration. I am also 100% sure that nobody could ever convince you that others might make reasoned and correct decisions, with data they have and you don't, that contradict what you believe to be the prudent course of action.

I am also 100% convinced that no one took this decision lightly...

That being said, even if the risk of a natural slide is expected to become critical within the next couple of hours - you would still not send the entire ski area home at the same time, via a road that closes for accidents when it's dry and sunny, let alone in heavy snow, and along which more traffic will be encountered preventing those people from continuing to safety. If you have a three hour window before a particular natural slide becomes imminent, and other less completely analyzed slide areas do as well, it's no reasonable to think you're going to clear all those people to Keystone in an emergency, when it can't frequently be accomplished under other instances of severe winter weather. It more frequently takes longer than 3 hours to pack up your ski gear and drive from A-Basin to Keystone in a blizzard than the Prof slides into the parking lot.

Edit:

I'm sure various factors were considered... I'll never know whether I'd agree with the decision given everything they knew at the time. It's possible that there are specific details that call for what would otherwise be unusual decisions to be made. I didn't say the wrong decision was made - I said it surprised me when I learned of the decision, that further consideration of various likelihoods doesn't seem to further justify the decision, and that all that not withstanding - no one got hurt, so whether for detailed analysis or luck, the decision got the intended result. At some point, that's the only part that really matters.

Edit again: I just reread my first post and I did say it was the wrong decision... in retrospect - I could have instead said that it seems like the wrong decision, which I think it does. But while I'm sure everyone making the decision had imperfect information at the time, it was undoubtedly more than I have now, and information to justify this decision could have existed.

[stfu&gbtw]

I'd like to be the first to nominate STFU to be put in charge of everything. As a former IT guy for New York Investment Banks he is uniquely qualified to make decisions on everything.

As he says just because its a historic snowstorm with Extreme Avalanche danger doesn't mean that the professor could slide and that CDOT and Abasin had any reason to make a decision to evacuate. He's spot on that its easier to search every car and create a new inpromtu system to ensure that everyone is out of the parking lot and stays out of the parking lot and out of the way of a potential climax avalanche before then presumably blasting the Prof to try to mitigate the danger.

Stop doubting the guy from New York, since he is from New York, he obviously knows more than the people from Colorado, who inherently are not from New York and therefore know less than someone from New York.

at least you know what your talking about

(ex) new yorkers are the smartest best most straight shooting people you'll ever meet the ny state public schools are the best in the country so you only develop the best, new yorkers know how to drive in traffic, place a food order without taking up space thinking about the menu while twenty people stand behind them, new yorkers know how to get it done, they know how to keep moving and not stick their finger in their ass like a midwesterner

If either of you are slow rolling your winning argument, save us the suspense...

Kinnik - I think that's my new favorite Colorado "we can't do that"-ism... How could anyone possibly determine whether a parking lot had been evacuated! That's like, at least a gazzillion cars!

Lol.. you guys are awesome.

#ColoradoNative

[Soups]

Crazy pic of that Bethel slide...

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPHNQ-Vg4t0/

[mdblows]

Hate to break up the multi page discussion about New Yorkers and evacuating A Basin, but Vail was amazing today and no one was there.

Suspect the crowds must have been on TGR posting multi paragraph diatribes about shit over which they had no control...

[summit]

Loveland was faceshot city all day until I left at 3. Everything opened except 9.

And STFU should STFU... he doesn't know what he doesn't know and he isn't interested in learning, only in being right.

[summit]

So Abasin opened for 2 hours... how much opened?

Did CB open?

How was Monarch?

[stfu&gbtw]

Loveland was faceshot city all day until I left at 3. Everything opened except 9.

And STFU should STFU... he doesn't know what he doesn't know and he isn't interested in learning, only in being right.

I love learning!

Please do elaborate on how the appropriate response to the high risk of an avalanche that may bury an entire parking lot is to pull all the skiers off the mountain and send them to their cars in said parking lot.

I am also looking forward to learning about why the high avy risk for the Professor is enough not only to instruct a couple of thousand people to go stand in its slide path, but then also to have several hundred vehicles drive directly below it, the Widow Maker, and the Hippy Trees slide paths, which were also evaluated as high avy risk.

You see, to a neophyte like myself, it would seem like all those people are safer if they are not standing in or driving through a known avalanche slide path currently evaluated to be at high risk. There must be some esoteric detail, buried deep in the minutia of our most advanced avalanche knowledge, that says when the risks are really off the charts, and there are thousands of scared and uninformed people involved, you make exactly the opposite decisions as anyone else would make in the same circumstances.

So please - Summit has the floor...

[goldenboy]

So Abasin opened for 2 hours... how much opened?

Did CB open?

How was Monarch?

Monarch was flat, like it always is.

High lift was open around 10, NFL was open around 10:45. Today kicked major amounts of ass.

[simple]

Take it to PM you wrinkled old prunes

It is dumping again!

[summit]

I love learning!
...
You see, to a neophyte like myself, it would seem...

Only to a neophyte who fancies himself an expert. The counter-explanations to your mistaken suppositions have already been explained to you in detail in previous posts. You have ignored them so I assumed you didn't read them.
If you want answers, read.
But I don't think you do.

[stfu&gbtw]

Only to a neophyte who fancies himself an expert. The counter-explanations to your mistaken suppositions have already been explained to you in detail in previous posts. You have ignored them so I assumed you didn't read them.
If you want answers, read.
But I don't think you do.

Why don't you go ahead and quote your post. You know, I need all the help I can get...