Avalanche kills person near Mount Baker ski area

Also, from experience, I can say that it's way too soon to be talking seriously about healing.

Totally agreed. I know I'd feel pressured to chime in publicly if analysis were beginning regarding an accident in which I'd been involved. We can minimize that feeling for those involved.

With an accident in 2009, I didn't really understand the entire thing until after ~7-10 days of reflection. I wrote the story down in the Percocet haze, but waited to more than a month to speak out. (Afterward, Lowell's analysis was spot on.)

This accident is far more grave, and the impacts much greater.

This is tragic news to hear and very sobering as I ski in the same area frequently and given the whole circumstances of the event think I probably would have made the same decision as they did to traverse under widowmaker to get to the parking lot as quickly and easily as possible.

The image of widowmaker posted here likely shows where the avalanche started but one can't see the traverse they were most likely doing. It's steep and shitty but not nearly as steep as the spines of widowmaker you can see in the picture where the slide likely started. It all ends up in the bagley creek drainage which at that spot is a pretty major terrain trap.

I've done that traverse once before in locked up conditions. The only reason it's worth doing is because all other options that avoid going under widowmaker require at least 500 vert of additional skinning to get to the parking lot whereas that traverse puts you 100 vertical ft directly beneath the parking lot. In the case of an injury that warranted calling 911 I can certainly see myself choosing to go under widdowmaker in the conditions NWAC described for that day rather than adding an additional climb to get to medical attention.

Tragic situation. Condolences to those who knew the victim and are grieving.

Lowell, the basic name for the cascade of events that leads to a mishap is called the "swiss cheese" model. It is not only an aviation reference. The same analogy is also used in other professions like the medical field. If you ever want to discuss let me know.

NAS Whidbey posted to Facebook regarding this incident. This link appears to work for me while signed in to Facebook, but not when I'm not .

www.facebook.com/NASWhidbeyIsland/posts/942835245787456

I was up there that day and saw the party ski by us in Corona Bowl.  To understand the reports it's important to know that most skiers local to Baker refer to the false summit as "Herman".  I suspect that a lot of them don't even realize that the true summit is across another bowl and up a ridge.  Skiers that are trying to look at a map and find the location based on the description seem to be confused.  The actual face that slid is lower down on the NE ridge that's coming off the false summit that is SE of the main summit. Here is a link that is centered on the slope.  Zoom out to orient yourself once you click the link.
goo.gl/maps/YpmpXEeAwE32

Lowell is spot on, there was more than one issue/mistake/failure in the process that occurred during their tour.  From what I was told on Sunday and what it says in the reports since then, they were dealing with an injury that might have distracted them from looking around and certainly hindered their travel.  From what I was told there was no way they were going to skin back up anything.  They also suffered from truly tragic timing as a glide avalanche is not very common and is very hard to predict timing with much certainty.  It's very different from a typical winter time slide.  That face has a history of similar slides but I don't think that would be very well known to most skiers in the area.

Alecapone, there is a more moderate ski line than is shown but there is no way to cross that slope without exposure to hazard.  Crossing that slope slowly increases the exposure to dangerous conditions.  It's not too different from crossing under a serac.

All of the early talk about a possible persistent weak layer was misguided.  My experience in the backcountry on Sunday matched the NWAC report pretty spot on.  We saw lots of very active but very isolated small pockets of wind slab.  Most were ~10' round patches between wind scoured rain crust and the moving snow wouldn't have caused any issues on it's own but had the potential to knock someone down on the boot supporting crust.  If you had found yourself sliding on the crust a recovery would have been difficult but that's not specifically an avalanche problem.  We had actually discussed baling the way they did if we found the crust to be impossible to pass on our way to go out the way the party came in to the bowl where we crossed paths.  That said, I feel like NWAC has been generally posting danger ratings one level lower than what they describe in their "Bottomline" description.