A good ski friend and I were booting up the final 20 vertical feet to the south sub-summit on Mt. Herman from Bagley Lakes today, positioning ourselves about ten feet back from the cornice lip. Suddenly we were in the air, moving straight down; felt like we chined off the rock wall and I was aware of being in the air for what seemed like a good while longer - then poof - on the slope (E facing gully). My friend got stood upright against the rock wall, unbelievably unhurt except for a hard thump on his thigh, as the double-decker bus sized cornice block exploded into pieces, ripped out the new wind-loaded snow on the top of the gully, and poured past him. I was on the slope, moving very fast in the debris, as the snow was sliding on the refrozen rained upon underlying pack. I swam my arms and made myself as broad and flat as I could and luckily stopped on top, about 200 VF below where I had dropped onto the slope, as the snow whizzed past me another 300 - 500 VF downhill. A second look suggested we had fallen maybe 50 feet with the cornice block failure. Dammit. I thought I was far enough back. I thought I respected cornices like I should. Monika was my buddy. A Glacier friend who skis Herman all the time said that cornice had sagged and developed a cleft 10 feet back - right where we booted - which was blown in like a crevasse, completely disguised. Wow, we got lucky. If the cornice bomb had made the snowpack fail deeper, we wouldn't be here. Such a lesson, survived, will never be forgotten.
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