Feb 24, 2014 Musings of a Whiner Baby

I'm annoyed by this trend to post a TR apologizing to the b/c skiing community at large if something happens, including a step-by-step bullet point tome about "what I did wrong".  It's ok to be un-apologetically brash in your approach to skiing and reporting of your skiing.  I'm thankful that the Hummels, Sjue, Dan H., Pretiore, Lurie, et. al's skiing wasn't (and isn't) influenced by the b/c skiing community's opinion of what is acceptable risk.  I and I'm sure many others have used their experiences as inspiration for further adventures.

Go big, medium or small.  Who cares.  But please, stop the self flagellation about it afterwards, because it only detracts from a potentially great read! 

Are you serious?

If you find thoughtful writing about risk boring, there are other places to find the sort of writing you apparently like. Or you can write it yourself.

But I'm kind of dumb-founded that you would actually criticize it here.

Maybe you're joking and I walked into your joke. If so, ya got me.

I'm annoyed by this trend

I agree, it's screwing up the prose. But we're all so paranoid about this snowpack, the prose is shot through with as much information as possible so noone gets slid to death by following my gung-ho TR.

Hopefully normal service will resume shortly as the weather changes & the weak layer sublimes.

Perhaps I'm, like Lowell, walking into the joke, but I have found reports where people reflected on the circumstances of some bad slips as well as avy encounters to be well worth reading, and not the sort of input I'd want to discourage. And even if a few folks showed that their tails were a bit tucked it hardly came across to me as apologetic to the community at-large. And I doubt any of it is going to discourage any future "first descenders" and they'll continue to inspire alongside meadow-skipping reports along with some self-reflection after incidents.

I don't want to drive thread drift too much, but I've learned at least as much from pioneers' mishaps as successes.

www.cascadecrusades.org/SkiMountaineerin...e2008/seface2008.htm

skisickness.com/CascadePass/NCBuckner/Avy.html

cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php...wflat&Number=1097842

There are more, as there are for anyone, but three may be sufficient to make the point. The writing may be succinct, but lessons are there.


To reply to jtack's original concern, I'm not sure that anyone knows if there's an easily-triggerable avalanche crocodile lurking deep beneath the westside snowpack on any particular slope, but there is uncertainty. We don't see this quantity of accumulation often, so few of us have meaningful experience with it. There will be more powder in March and April.

My safety maxim:

"No need to freak, just wait a week"

I'm thankful that the Hummels, Sjue, Dan H., Pretiore, Lurie, et. al's skiing wasn't (and isn't) influenced by the b/c skiing community's opinion of what is acceptable risk. 

Interesting that you mention these guys. Ever since I've been viewing their stuff on the 'net, I expect to be reading an RIP thread about at least one of them.