Avalanche kills person near Mount Baker ski area

well put dberdinka

and to add to this:

As a result I think a lot of backcountry users will take that as the green light to jump on just about anything without considering an actual assessment of conditions as presented.  One could probably make an argument that NWAC reports are in some ways detrimental to the self-sufficiency and safety of experienced backcountry users and only really pertinent to the casual snowshoer/slackcountryer/general population.

I find a simple rule for backcountry travel is that:
every individual claim full authority.
NWAC is icing on the cake, not an institution to which you relegate authority. Same goes for skin tracks.

Conditions are never static. Every backcountry traveler has to make decisions in real time, on the fly, in flow, on the go.

Really sorry to hear what happened. Healing vibes to all involved.


a part of widowmaker can be seen here on the left (Justin Wood photo):

Simple fact is that NWAC reports are not always accurate.  While they tend to capture the big trends correctly there are times when they miss unexpected and/or rapid changes in snowpack or localized variations. 

Keep hammering on this point. NWAC should be viewed as only one (extremely valuable) tool in the toolkit. There is ample evidence of wet slab climaxes from the past several days since the big rain. Look over at Goat and Sefrit etc. All the usual rock slabs are popping. The rock slab on the south face of Herman is another trouble spot, anyone know if it went during this last cycle?

While I personally did not know the victims I'm reposting the following from another website......

On behalf of Amanda Peart, a memorial fund has been setup to help support her and her children after the loss of her husband and their father, Mark Panthen. Mark at 36 years old leaves a beautiful, but devastated family. I hope you can find it within your hearts to share the link to Mark Panthen Memorial Fund to help Amanda and her children:

[size=14pt]The Mark Panthen Memorial Fund[/size]  

We have a great Northwest community. Now is the time to come together to support this family in our community.

Thank you

My heartfelt condolences to Amanda, her children, and all those who knew Mark. What a horrible loss.

In the vein of learning, where exactly in the photo is windowmaker and does anyone know or have theories about why the skiers were where they were? I've gotten the impression that they were traversing when the first skier got inured (by avalanche?). Then 2 more avalanches, both from above, occured. Does one usually  traverse beneath widowmaker to reach or return from common lines? Were they skiing a line? I don't know Baker all that well.
http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=35564.0;id=22245;image

It's worth looking at the TGR thread linked above - it has comments from people who were in the area and saw what happened, which helps make sense of it. This is a copy-and-paste.

"It appears that one of them was injured while skiing on the backside of what most people call Mt. Herman. Technically the true Mt. Hermon is behind to the west. They had called 911 for help with the injury so several people were watching them work their way down. They were coming from the backside of Herman and cutting under what is known as the Widowmaker, just on the apron of it. A slide from above hit them and now both were injured. A second and third slide came down from above them and really messed them up. It is amazing that they were not both fully buried or killed from trauma. These were very large wet slides going on the ground. Widowmaker is very steep and the ground is solid rock slab with no vegatation. We just had a ton of rain a 2 days before this so the water could not drain due to the solid rock. The stability really wasn't that bad anywhere else. I bet these were the only slides in the Mt Baker region yesterday. Strange set of circumstances really. A situation went from bad to worse. They longlined one guy out and left the other due to him being mostly buried, having severe head trauma and it being too unsafe to dig him out."

Such a tragic situation, my heart goes out to his family and friends and most especially his poor wife and kids.

I'm waiting to see the official, properly informed, analysis, but curiosity's hard to quash entirely.

I've barely skied the Baker BC, just ~six trips or so, but from photos people have posted, it sounds like the slide path is where I've labelled "Spot 2" on this map. I've refrained from using the path name because it seems too apropos at present.

caltopo.com/m/5M86

The edit password is "TAY"; do feel free to improve the map however you wish. To edit, click on the "Read-only" link, and it'll let you enter a password.