2 AVALANCHES ON MT WASHINGTON, ONE FATALITY 3/1/13

[icelanticskier]

1 skiing related incident in tux. 1 climbing related fatality in huntington. details coming soon. RIP.

rog

[icelanticskier]

http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/214...gton-avalanche

rog

[totaliboard]

RIP. never like to hear about losing a life on the mtn.. went there today for AIRIE 1 and saw debris on lobster claw and a crown on the lip.

[userA]

sad news indeed

[Jonathan S.]

Huntington (currently at the top, but will eventually get bumped down):
http://www.mountwashingtonavalanchec...013-summaries/

Tux (tour background only; incident details are still being sorted out -- the slide mechanics are still kind of confusing with differing accounts):
http://www.newhampshireclimbing.com/...sp?ID=81&cat=6

[buildakicker]

RIP.

Please, keep it safe out there guys!

[dark_star]

Very sorry to hear this news. Was debating heading to Washington this weekend but I deemed the avi risk too high for my avalanche experience level.

RIP

[icelanticskier]

Very sorry to hear this news. Was debating heading to Washington this weekend but I deemed the avi risk too high for my avalanche experience level.

RIP

skied up high east facing today. gullies skied were 900+ vert @ 38 degrees. tricky snowpack, but plenty stable nuff for two of us light footers. great untracked pow snow. nice to have ne winds to tamp things in a bit

rog

[ex-powderbroker]

Very sad news about the fatality, it sounds like he had a lot of potential and life to live.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/20...neering-death/

[Jonathan S.]

Another article:
http://www.conwaydailysun.com/index....alanche-030513

Sent from my ADR6300 using TGR Forums

[totaliboard]

im aware that many of the fatalities in NH are trauma-induced and not by asphyxiation, but
"He was carried about 10 feet."
had me do a double take.. i wonder if that was a typo.

[icelanticskier]

im aware that many of the fatalities in NH are trauma-induced and not by asphyxiation, but
"He was carried about 10 feet."
had me do a double take.. i wonder if that was a typo.

ya, doesn't even seem conversation worthy really. might be a typo, we shall see.

rog

[icelanticskier]

Was debating heading to Washington THIS WEEKEND but I deemed the avi risk too high for my avalanche experience level.

just noticed you were referring to this past weekend. you def made the right call. i had sun/mon/tues off and waited till tuesday for better stabilty and less potential triggers running about.

rog

[Jonathan S.]

time for a grim spreadsheet update:






Yes, everything really is on the internet: later on back home, looking up Crumbaker's degrees (bachelor's in physics from Case Western Reserve University, then that GoS rescue cache PhD in physics from Colorado State University PhD in physics), I even found his grave. Saving a spot for his wife to join him eventually. He also left behind a one-year-old daughter.










Probably his grandparents buried nearby?

[icelanticskier]

book smart maybe, but he and john decided to leave all avy gear in the car on that super sketchy dreadful day in 96'. my hands still ache from the cold probing for those guys for hours with my ole peips 457 optifinder being useless.

visited the cache yesterday. RIP.

rog

[ex-powderbroker]

im aware that many of the fatalities in NH are trauma-induced and not by asphyxiation, but
"He was carried about 10 feet."
had me do a double take.. i wonder if that was a typo.

"Watts was in Huntington’s Ravine on Mount Washington when the avalanche was triggered, pushing him 1,000 feet down the ravine, according to the Forest Service."

Rog - the comment about being book smart is out of line IMO, even if you were there.

[totaliboard]

MWAC accident summary from earlier this season: 12-18-2012 2 Reported – 2 Climbers Avalanched in Pinnacle Gully

Two climbers approaching Pinnacle Gully reported that they were swept down 70 to 100 meters from the start of the first ice pitch in Pinnacle Gully. In waist to chest deep snow the lead individual triggered the avalanche as he approached the ice from the north. The fracture occurred above the climber and was approximately 5 meters below the transition to steep ice. Neither climber was buried in the incident and no injuries were sustained.

[icelanticskier]

Rog - the comment about being book smart is out of line IMO, even if you were there.

ya, was unnecessary, but seeing people die who should know better and even were quoted as saying something regarding, "oh it's just mt washington", to a roommate when they were told to be extra careful when leaving boston that early morning just ticks me off. i dated john walds sister, by the way, so i'm VERY familiar with the situation and folks involved.

rog

[lynchdogger]

Any more info on the skier triggered incident in Tuckerman Ravine on same day?

[icelanticskier]

Any more info on the skier triggered incident in Tuckerman Ravine on same day?

yes. was a local guide and his client. they were skiing down from an observatory overnight. guide skis down the claw to a "safe zone". client skis in and kicks off the slide.

i guess the guide was pretty embarassed from what i hear. from what i understand, the aspect had been receiving pretty direct loading for days due to the persistent north winds. the claw is usually my safest exit down from up high even when things are tricky as there are multiple ways to ski it to avoid the tricky and manage the terrain. no one hurt, just bruised ego probably.

rog

[monkfish]

from what i understand, the aspect had been receiving pretty direct loading for days due to the persistent north winds.

on a 5-day-old sun crust that became the bed surface; see caption beneath first of the photos at the bottom of this MWAC page. The captions also make clear the LC slide was considerably larger than may have been suggested by the report that the caught skier only was carried 10'. Having seen the debris field Sunday from a distance on the ravine floor it looked non-trivial to me.

[Jonathan S.]

[...]The captions also make clear the LC slide was considerably larger than may have been suggested by the report that the caught skier only was carried 10'. Having seen the debris field Sunday from a distance on the ravine floor it looked non-trivial to me.

My understanding is that the caught skier was able to self-arrest somehow, and otherwise would have been carried much further.

Agreed on the debris field Sunday. I came much closer, skinning from the center of the ravine floor up on onto the rib-like feature to the skinner's right of Lunch Rocks. If I had not been so sensitive to the danger from that side, I probably would have been skinning more to my right as I came out of the TRT, with a route that might have been within the debris of that incident, as I would not have expected the runout zone to be so far from that line in current snowpack conditions.

[totaliboard]

bump cus it doesnt need its own thread.. but ahh, the caption on the MWAC site says center slid R4 D4. seems pretty fuckin big. i just dont see any debris is all

[icelanticskier]

bump cus it doesnt need its own thread.. but ahh, the caption on the MWAC site says center slid R4 D4. seems pretty fuckin big. i just dont see any debris is all

having lived in different ranges of the west and traveling a bunch in western canada, the largest slides i've ever seen have been on mt washington. the biggest one was in march of 97' when the whole west side from right near above jacobs almost all the way to near the ammo trail went huge with a crown up to 6+ feet deep and a couple thousand feet wide. twas really wild to see. it ran over 1500 vert.

rog

[totaliboard]

yea, i have a similar background. numerous seasons in montana, seen plenty of big slides, but to this day, the biggest debris ive seen was in tucks. chunks the size of a lazy boy.