TR Replies

Mark, I'm sorry for overreacting in my earlier post.  I think I misunderstood what you were trying to say.  I value and respect your opinions and your wonderful contributions to this site and the backcountry skiing community.

As I may have started to say earlier, I think that these types of reports would, in general, be limited to the time of year we just passed through, where the ski areas are not yet open and the coverage might be questionable away from the clear cut "run...

Hmmm.  An interesting range of perspectives here.  I'd like to reinforce and elaborate on a couple of points.

First, my opinions are only my opinions; I don't expect that they carry more weight than the opinions of others.  Second, I did not, in my earlier post, take any sort of moral stand; I just stated what I find useful in a trip report. Third, I have absolutely nothing against "crowing," provided it is accompanied by a certain amount of useful information (he...

Phil forgot to mention that this tour is not recomended for snowboards ;)
He used his split board yesterday and while it proved invaluable for trailbreaking due to it's width, the trees forced him to use them as skis on the exit as well. ;D

That snow was pretty nice up there!  No sign of any other tracks in the bowl.  I guess that shouldn't surprise anyone after last weekend.

We bashed our way through Jim Hell but still made some good turns.  Rain crust was present to near the top of the logging roads, but seemingly less so in the forest near the margins of the rain-snow line; it was as if the snow covered trees soaked up the rain before it could hit the ground.  We didn't see any signs of instability either, despite venturing onto some moderately steep slopes.  We followed our skin track out the log roads and down Arrowhead's clear cuts via head lamp....

I'm glad I hit refresh!  I was about to bring up the same point about "frontcountry" area such as the Alp BC or Crystal north & southback having a different snowpack structure because of skier compaction.

However, I have a slight objection to this statement:

 Without value and perhaps dangerous: reports which assume that conditions within avalanche controlled areas or areas which are heavily ski cut all winter can be assumed t...

Charles

I, for one, would not be opposed to some 'in bounds' reports during the 'ski season'. That may be because I spend most of my time in the winter riding lifts. So perhaps an 'in bounds' board might be in order? Although skiing Alpental, Stevens, Crystal is a world away from BC it certaintly allows plenty of time to work on your technique which translates to the BC, and with the early season supply of snow we've had  I can't complain! ;D I've been at Stevens 5 times since day b...

It seems useful to leave it in the trip reports, because it gives an idea of conditions at different elevations at that spot, and it was human-powered too...

I think my posting posed the same dillema. I'm not all that concerned either way, but my logic for posting of my alpental lifts report here was that I tried to only include some detail on likely BC coverage from what we saw (that glades up higher in the Snoqualmie area might be getting enough coverage to be worthy) rather than a detailed description of what trails I skied on the lifts and how amazing the semi-tracked was and so forth, combined with the fact that I tend to surf only the trip repo...

Yeah Robie, you got it right.  It's a nearly east facing aspect.  I'm sure you've skied that chute before.  From the top of the bowl, standing right in the middle, you just traverse to skier's right and up a small bump to access the top of this short chute.  Bob said he heard it release before Don even started to tumble and he thinks he about ruptured his vocal chords by shouting so loudly.  Although we didn't go back over to look at the crown, I'm sure it was the new sn...

I agree that we have all made mistakes in the past.  However, I think that misses the point.  My whole take on this is that there is a missing link in education that has fallen by the wayside.  When I started heading out in winter (eek! over 30 years already) I did so with experienced mountaineers  and backcountry traverlers.  There was a formal and informal system of teaching the inexperienced  and young through friendships, college clubs, and schools (Spokane and...

<snip>

Lat     47deg 27min  1sec N
Long 121deg 26min 17sec W
Elevation 3439

Corey's pictures show the location. In fact, these photos  show up slope terrain within 0.1 mile of the likely burial site.

Published reports indicate victim was on Snow Lake Trail. Not so, she was following our track on the winter trail, on the other side (SW) of the S Fork Snoqualmie River drainage.

Mark, I've seen nothing regarding victim's party size. I understand that the call to 911 was by...

Thanks, Greg.  I have a personal connection to that switchback, having been avalanched there myself a couple of years ago.  Lots of windloading and a pair of terrain traps in the road cuts.

John, you might begin by checking out  

Mark,

What I gather from the paper is that the slide happened at the switchback.  Western senior out for a hike on friday with two friends.  They were buried for 24 hours until one of them managed to dig his way out.  She was out on her third hike this winter.  
What a sad event for her family.  Makes me wish that people had a better idea of what is going on out there.  Just a kid out hiking with her friends.......

Thanks for the links Corey.  Pictures are far better at describing something like this than words.  My condolences to the families and friends of those who perished this weekend.

Brent:  what are you refering to as Mushroom Couloir?  Is this the drainage at the edge of the large open area before the trail re-enters the woods, a half mile or so before Source Lake?  In early season ice sometimes forms here and several times I've seen a few ice climbers just up from the trail.  The trail then re-enters the woods, crosses one large treed slide path, continues in forest, then crosses the large slide path coming down from Pineapple Pass and reaches Source L...

That is really sad.  A snow shoe party was caught in a slide near Artist Point yesterday.  I was up skiing in the area with my seven-year-old daughter and the conditions were ripe for avalanches; over an inch an hour of dense wind blown (southwest up to 20 mph) snow.

It is a disappointment when people without any mountain sense can wander off and get into trouble.  These kinds of events are going to increase when people can walk into a shop and buy some shoes to go snow h...

I was up there, too.  Yo-yoing the slope right above the road was the best.  I went up past Skyline Lake and dropped into a N-facing valley -- bad choice.  It was "submarine snow" and I climbed back out sinking in to my knees -- very arduous, and I generally like breaking trail.  I made a Rutschblock test on a 30 degree N-facing slope at about 5100 ft and it gave me a "1".  I thereafter stuck to 20 degree slopes.

I know several of the Alpy patrolers and they use the Alpental.com website- they told me about it.  I have both maps and I think the complement each other- it's hard to beat a picture. :)

Sweeeet.

Mark, thanks for the offer. Not essential, since it sounds like it may affect only a small percentage of the small percentage using Macs, but if you have time, I'd be interested to know the results...

I had no idea that alpental.com was Danny. I skied with him about a year and a half ago when he surpassed the known WA consecutive months record (106 at that time). Quite a coup to get that domain name! I'll have to write to him.

Corey,
Sure enough 8)...Sunday was the 7th.  Not sure what I was thinking.  I must have fat fingered the 6 instead of the 7.  Anyway, it was good to put faces with names.  See you out there!

Nice TR and photo (nice old-growth tree skiing shot!).  I have one question:  the avalanche path you refer to as Big Bertha, is that the big one with the cliff band in the middle?  If it's the one I'm thinking of (it has to be, right?) I thought it was called Phantom (or Phantom slide path or some variation), or at least that's what I've heard it referred to around here.  Not to say something can't have two names, I'm just always really interested to hear about the names of t...

Just wait till  you see my double  8)

I dunno, Darryl.
Every time I looked up your skiing looked pretty good to me.
It did get kinda old hearing about that skin bag, tho, didn't it  ;)