Another Avy Death in ID

Thanks ,Cookie for the extra insight. In the last picture the crown can be picked out at the lower edge of the trees. I'm a big believer That trees are safer especially here in the Northwest provided they go all the way to the ridge with no open slopes or starting zones above them. Mainly because of tree bombs. Temps here fluctuate above and below freezing causing the acumulated snow to drop. Not exactly a truthful place to dig a pit for that matter.

It may be illusion in the photo, but it looks like a slight convexity (a word?) right at the crown. could be the lack of trees is due to sliding in the past?

It may be illusion in the photo, but it looks like a slight convexity (a word?) right at the crown.  could be the lack of trees is due to sliding in the past?

bump -- I thought the same thing -- is that treeless strip actually a slide path?  Or is it just too steep for a lot of trees? Is the crown actually lower than the red line on the photo? That would make more sense ...

Around here trees grow from cliffs, for pete's sake.

I'd be interested to hear about the snowpack in that area. I'm under the impression that there hasn't been much snow at all in Idaho this year, which lets me imagine a thin snowpack with very persistent weakness. Sun Valley reports a whopping 44" base now and it's snowed more since then, no?

A good reminder for everyone. Sorry for her friends' and family's loss!

Trees have to be almost too close for one to ski through before they can be considered avalanche proof and they can actually be starting points for open slopes below since they can allow fracture propagation from tree to tree across the slope.  It seems as if this could be the case here, but I really can't judge from the photo.  I'd be interested in reading the final accident report when it comes out.

Sorry to hear about the death.

Thanks Scotsman for stating this thread as it really shows that we need to think about all slopes before, while and after we ski them.

climberdave

It appears that among many other factors in this accident the slope had slid earlier in the season. Here's the accident report.

www.avalanche.org/~svavctr/accidents/Gla...ntReport20090306.pdf