Managing hazards when skiing

I took a long uncontrolled slide in March on this year skiing at Mission Ridge. It resulted in a pretty violent potentially life threatening injury.

The slope I slid down is probably around D10 or D11, 40-45 degrees with rocks, small cliff bands and many small to medium sized trees. The section right under the cornice is probably closer to 50 degrees at the time I skied it. The snow surface was very hard, probably knife hard at the time.

I got complacent because it was the ski area and had been skiing similar terrain all week taking advantage of the meager snowfall we had been getting. Slopes of similar aspect had 6-8" of light wind blown snow in the gullies. Normally I would toss a rock or snow ball into the chute to "test" the snow surface but for some reason I just hopped off the cornice and knew immediately it was a mistake. I couldn't climb out so I made two turns, lost my edges and away I went. I slid over a small rock band and it pulled my skis off and put me head down and accelerating rapidly. About 200 vf down I hit a small tree with my back on the right side, went airborne, cartwheeled and slid to the flats at the bottom. After a long and very sketchy evac with two belay on the toboggan I wound up in the hospital with 5 broken and displaced ribs, scapula broken in two places, collapsed lung and a chest full of blood.

This whole incident has given me a new perspective on skiing steep, hard snow with exposure. I think I will still ski steeps but only in prime conditions like pow or corn and corn only with clean lines. I think most folks don't appreciate how fast you get going on hard snow in steep terrain and how utterly helpless you are(I knew it theoretically, but didn't really appreciate the consequences. Even if I had two whippets or an ice axe at the ready I don't think I could have arrested, it happens that fast. I can't even begin to think of how you could actually practice for an arrest in a realistic way with out putting yourself in danger. Maybe you could practice on belay in steep icy terrain.

Don't confuse objective hazards with subjective hazards.  Most of the precautionary methods discussed deal with subjective hazards.

I changed the title, I don't mean to confuse anyone.

Thanks all for the thoughtful replies.

Lowell-
I've used the ice axe technique for resting on steep terrain. I've only ridden with an ice axe in hand 2 times, once on Shuksan and once at Cascade Pass and both times it was more useful to stop, plant the axe and either clip it or just hang on it so I wasn't putting my trust solely in holding an edge on frozen corn.

I actually find skinning to be scarier than descending and have pulled out my axe more often to clip it, take the skis off, and continue on boots.

The only falls/slides that I've taken have been while ascending. One was mid kickturn when I had wandered off of an icy skin track onto an equally frozen corn pitch. I was able to arrest quickly with a whippet but it could have been much worse. The other was trying to traverse a gully in spring slush on top of hard corn when the slush gave out from under me and I started sliding with that section of the skin track. It was more embarassing than anything but could have been dangerous if it hadn't been a gentle gully.

What about traverses? I think as a splitboarder I might be allergic to them, I'd rather get up something steep and ride back to the trailhead but the reality of it is there are a lot of interesting mountains out there that I wouldn't get to see if I only climb stuff that I can ski back to the car from. I was on Eldorado last weekend (without skis, big mistake) and talked to two guys that were headed off on the Isolation traverse and two others that made the Forbidden traverse. Both of those look really interesting but it makes it hard to ski what you climb.

What about skinning across glaciers? I've had serious conversations with several of my partners and we typically agree that the extra surface area of the skis makes punching a foot through a bridge unlikely and that if a partner took a fall it would be difficult or impossible to arrest the fall on skis. We have typically not roped up for glaciers if we're on skis but will use ropes more often if we're carrying the skis.

I don't do much super steep stuff in the bc, so this all gets a bit easier for me. My approach is somewhat similar to avajane's though I suspect I'm dialing it back a bit further - perhaps calibrated to our respective skill and risk tolerance levels.

I recall being a bit nervous my first time going into the SW chutes - I was with Silas and GregM, having met them at the P&R the evening before, and none of us was 100% positive we were heading to the right spot, but we were pretty sure. The top, before you roll over and can see the whole slope below you to the flat-ish spot at the bottom of the run, was still frozen, and it was quite unnerving to me to commit, imagining the challenge of changing over and climbing back out if we had screwed up.

The comments about arresting (or not) on icy surface are interesting and important. I learned to ski at downhill areas in NH/ME, and spent a lot of time on "frozen granular" surface conditions (when they said "ice" on the snow report, they meant water ice - we skied some of that too!), often on slopes that had been meticulously groomed so were smooth, but were also hard and slick. The only way I learned to recover from a fall was to get my skis below me asap and get back up onto them!! We of course didn't have whippets or ice axes, but I share the skepticism noted about about succeeding in an arrest with them. The right answer is simply not to fall, but of course things happen and having a well-trained instinctual response of getting skis under you and getting back up onto them is a good idea (I've watched eastern skiers do this on slopes steeper than I was willing to venture onto, fwiw). I think you have to earn this at the ski area in really crappy conditions. I would still not want to count on it while above hazards like cliffs or whatnot.

I also learned how to manage edging on really hard icy surface while descending - I had a repeat of this at Whistler in December this season and it took a few turns to regain my composure and engage those rusty skills and feel more fully in control. It is a learned skill.

But I don't miss skiing hard icy snow so I would greatly prefer to wait for when I have pretty good reason to believe that we'll have the sort of "prime conditions" to which Aaron refers. This makes me wonder if I'd ever take on something like the Park Headwall via the traverse, at least w/o one of the belay or downclimb approaches.

But I'm fairly far over toward the "weeny meadow skipper" end of the spectrum, so I think my biggest contribution to a thread like this is WRT what I learned from a young adulthood paying good money to ski ice with high winds and below 0 F temps...

damn aaron, i feel ya, having slid fast and out of control myself.
scary ride
bF

I took a long uncontrolled slide in March on this year skiing at Mission Ridge. It resulted in a pretty violent potentially life threatening injury.
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My daughter took a scary fall on hard steep snow last year and didn't stop till she hit a tree as well - but luckily hit it just right and was uninjured.

Years ago I remember tearing down an Alpine Meadows slope to catch up to and stop a sliding skier wearing "wet look" clothing and heading for the trees.

I was night skiing Hayak in the 80's when the bumps under the chair were so iced up that not a soul was skiing them. After a few runs on the roundabout beginner traverse I started skiing them slowly. With youthful confidence I soon started skiing them faster and eventually took a fall. I slid past 2 life towers fighting to stop and desperately trying to break off my safety straps to keep the skis from hacking me up. One finally broke and I ended up flipping over and digging my hands and arms in and giving myself a 3rd degree forearm in the process. I found my ski a couple of hours later stuck against a building at the base. Hayak isn't even steep!

I know how easy it is to pick up speed on hard snow. I like my ice ax much better that two ski poles on steep bootpacks. One failed step can throw you.