Free 2 Be: Avalanche Level 2 Certification

This was quite the busy weekend. I am still trying to recover from the skinning, digging, more skinning, cold, cornice trundling, and even more skinning. Notice there wasn't mention of skiing. Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of skiing done with this certification.

We met early Saturday morning at Brighton Winter Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon under a growing blanket of fresh 5% powder. We of course had the traditional night lecture prior to our first field day. So now we've packed up all of our gear into the Wasatch Mountaineering Club lodge. There's a lot of excitement to get out to see how the new snow is reacting with the old snowpack. I once again lucked out with the weather, getting fresh snow, and a lot of it, to study and help me with my understanding of avalanches.

So the first day was really tough sitting there in the middle of a white fluff dump, not being able to ski it, and having to dig snowpits for 4 hours. We went through the various stability tests and snowpack profile exercises. My first day instructor was from Telluride Colorado and brought a different aspect to avalanche study and stability analysis that we don't get in the Wasatch. We are so spoiled in terms of snowpack stability and snow quality in the Wasatch Front. Things are more temperamental in the San Juan Mountains. Mike was really able to grab my attention and keep me really interested in the snowpack analysis.

After we had collected our data for the day, we hiked up to the ridge and finally got to partake of the blessing from heaven. We came up to a 15' cliff that looked oh so nice and fun. I normally check out a cliff before hitting it, but the snow was so thick and fluffy that I really wanted to do it. I sat there thinking about it for a second and then backed off. Why did I back off? Well because my leg, specifically my right fibula about 2/3's up, was absolutely killing me from a bad wreck that I had on Tuesday at Snowbird dropping a cliff. I chose the 5 foot drop option instead.

Saturday night was fun. We had a potluck and I eventually won a game of trivial pursuit with Jim Knight, a Black Diamond marketing employee.

Sunday was a bluebird day with tons of powder left to be skied. We got our new instructors and headed out to the backcountry. We came to a slope that we knew would have some wind loading and some other stability issues. We triggered a very small slide on the way out to our first destination and that is what we're out here for. The slope we looked at had tracks from Saturday but also had obvious wind loading. We trundled two cornices to try triggering a slide. The first cornice was about the size of a refrigerator and the second the size of a compact car. No results. We determined the slope safe to do a ski cut. No results with the ski cut so we all went down one at a time. It turned out to be nice soft snow and it didn't hurt my leg at all.

Once we skinned back up to the ridge the wind picked up even more than earlier and we could see the snow change right in front of us. A good slab started to form and cracks were shooting out as we travelled on the safe part of the ridge.

Monday my group got to go out with Mr. Bruce Tremper himself. Bruce is the head of the Utah Avalanche Center, the author of "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain", and an extremely cagey avalanche veteran. Our task for the day was to lead the group including our instructor, safely through avalanche terrain to a spot that would be a good area use as a test piece in producing Tuesday's avalanche forecast.

Today's snow had a wind crust and wasn't too pleasant. We found that yesterday's wind slabs had bonded well with the snow and it was difficult to trigger any avalanches on small test slopes.

Bruce was able to finally trigger one on a 45 degree northeast facing slope while tied in. It was cool to see the avalanche in action. Then we were able to study the debris pile and become familiar with the snow profile of the slab. Really quite interesting. I loved it.

I had a really good extended weekend with a diverse group of individuals. I did happen to get a couple of phone numbers for new touring partners. Even though I didn't get to rest much, it amounted to good times. I now have a new view on backcountry travel: Instead of proclaiming a slope "safe" for descent, I now say that we could "get away" with descending the slope. Some times luck is what gets you down.

Trundling (cutting) a cornice