April fools on Table Mountain

It was a tongue in cheek call out of april fools on april fools day.
Jason, no offense intended. I'm sometimes foolish as well.

It was a cool (and free) calibrating moment, to make an assessment and see it come true. For us, that assessment told me to dial it back a bit on a lesser line, and standy by at the bottom. For Jason, they knew and tested themselves in a place with a safer, known runout. It was a decent amount of snow moving fast and pretty far but there were no trees or traps in its path.

I showed this to some of my more intense buddies. They kind of laughed it off, having intended similar actions, "just moving some snow around, controlling Herman...". These guys did commit hard and ride clear of the moving snow. Got to respect that. If snow is moving, even moderately, you need to pedal down and get the hell into your safe spot. It is an essential skill/instinct to have.

Jason, its worth noting that while you were clearly outrunning the snow thru the chute, it really sped up to atleast equal your speed. Its seems the upper, earlier released snow crashes like a fast wave over the just breaking snow. I'd say you didn't outrun it as much as ride strong right out of the path. Well done.

More than anything else, I thought my luck in capturing the fracturing steps in image was pretty cool and worth sharing.

Here are some cleaned up stills:






I'm happy some enjoyed looking. I'm more happy Jason and friend nailed it.

Hey Chuck, no offense taken and you were a lot more gentle than some of my more conservative friends. It's been a hard season for avalanche deaths and I think everyone is more careful about it now.

I think your pictures are fascinating to see. To see the way that the crown line propogated, to see the way the slab wrinkled up, and to see the relative size of the mass of moving snow compared to me.

When we got to our high point our intention was to ride Heart Shaped Box, the pocket two ridges to the looker's right, closest to the end of the Nose on this side, but changed to the one that we did because we suspected it would move and thought that the run out was easier to manage on the line that we took. Looking at your pictures makes me think the line we rode was the better of the two (not that I'd recommend anyone go swimming in such sharky waters...).

I agree that I did not outrun the slide, instead I kept my speed up and didn't slow down when it first started to move. Once it was up to speed it was easily as fast as I was but by then I was already moving across the fall line. If I had picked a more open face that didn't limit the propagation across the face and didn't have the opportunity to move out of the slide path I doubt that I would have been as successful in evading it.

Tongue in cheek is hard to read sometimes. Occasionally a "look at these stupid idiots" thread pops up. Lame every time.

So glad this wasn't one of those times.

Stay safe everybody.