Slides at Paradise

The backcountry is no place to be right now. Tuesday at Crystal, even inbound slopes of 20* or less were cutting and sliding. It's a no brainer. 1'-2' of fresh snow piled on top of hard pack, granular, raincrust will, with out a doubt, create slides with hardly any effort.

Stay inbounds. Period!!

Conditions are way above extreme. They are just plain silly.

OLYMPICS, WASHINGTON CASCADES NEAR AND WEST OF THE
CREST-
...AVALANCHE WARNING FOR THURSDAY...
High avalanche danger above 4000 feet and considerable
danger below Thursday morning, gradually decreasing
Thursday afternoon and becoming high above 5000 feet
and considerable below Thursday night and early Friday.
Danger continuing to slowly decrease Friday and
becoming high above 6000 feet and considerable below
Friday afternoon. Danger gradually increasing Friday
night.

Bandit, do you know if those are measured slopes of 20 degrees? If so, exceedingly scary.

Gary Brill's comments are spot on, as are Randy Beaver's.  With the conditions at Paradise the day of the accident,  and in consideration of terrain and the consequences of a slide,  the only risk management choice would be to avoid the slope entirely.  Whether intentional or not, only one of the snowshoers was on the slope when it slid - which would be the best option only if you had absolutely no other option available.  Unfortunately that kind of risk management has dire consequences.  I do differ with Randy in that I think the TAY community is very representative of the broader avalanche community.   Although all of us in the TAY community should have avalanche education, carry beacons, probes and shovels, and have the prerequisite experience to go where we go and make good decisions, I don't believe we all do - based on some of the questions and comments that I read in Random Tracks and Trip Reports.  Even if we all do have the preferred skills and tools, we still need to be constantly alert to the dangers arising from our humanity - and keep the human factors in check.  I've skied in and outbounds, backcountry and frontcountry, for well over 50 years, have made my share of mistakes, and have narrowly missed buying the farm on more than one occasion.  The margin is sometimes thinner than we realize.  The thinking about, studying of and learning from these tragic accidents are the best memorials we can give the unfortunate victims, their friends and families.   Gerry H  

Anyone have a precise route of saftey up to Panorama or above? Seems like all the aspects on that sucker require some travel in AVI terrain.

Maybe a way up from Mazama Ridge?

Also any reports of Avi danger above 7k?

Anyone have a precise route of saftey up to Panorama or above?  Seems like all the aspects on that sucker require some travel in AVI terrain. 
Maybe a way up from Mazama Ridge? 

There's a couple of ways up to the top of Pan that should be safer than where you see the more common winter bootpacks:
The first would be to follow your instincts up Mazama Ridge to Stevens-VanTrump and then follow the Skyline Trail route along the ridge to Pan.
Another less scenic, more direct and a bit steeper route, and one that I've seen RMI guides leading winter seminars favor, is the treed ridge between Pan Face and Edith basin.  I've used that before when I didn't trust Pan Face.

If you're lusting for higher than Pan (like Muir) another option is going from Stevens-VanTrump up the Paradise Gl moraine to the saddle at Cowlitz Rocks and then up the mellowest slopes of the upper Paradie Gl merging back onto the Muir below Anvil.  Burgdorfer shows that alternative on p207 of his latest book, p199 of his old one.

You may note that I didn't say any of these routes were "Safe".  You, of course, know to make that determination based on your own evaluation of current local conditions during your outing.  Nonetheless, I do believe these options utilize mostly lower angle slopes than the more obvious routes typically utilized by the masses to access or circumvent Pan and thus could be safer alternatives.