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



Look from above


Slope Tested and Approved


Avalanche Debris


Avalanche Test Slope


Flank Profile




The sun came out lighting up our run as we were leaving our test area

Busy Busy Weekend: Avalanche Certification, Going Away Party, Soccer, and Hockey

This weekend was quite a busy one for me. The main event for this weekend was my Avalanche Level 1 Certification class. There were some avalanche incidents that happened on our second field day that deserve notice. I will hit on that later.

Friday after work I packed up my car, rushed through the traffic, and made it down to REI Salt Lake for the introduction lecture of the class. This was good and went over everything that I had been reading about in my preparation for this cert. Three hours later, we were done with the first day. Everyone left full of excitement due to the big storm coming in and the instabilities in the snow pack that would be troubled the next day.

Saturday started out with the storm front moving into Little Cottonwood Canyon as I was driving up. It was bound to be a huge dump. The flakes were large, heavy, and plentiful. I really just wanted to be out skiing. After our morning briefing, we divided up into groups and then skinned out to different areas. Our first stability tests were showing the obvious signs of new snow instability. We all expected that based on our previous discussion. However our first pit on a west facing slope had some unexpected surprises. The baselayer of the snow pack had huge, 3 mm, facets. This sugar actually shot out of the snowpack as we moved snow away from the base of our pit. All of our stability tests on every aspect that we looked at had this extremely weak layer of facets. There were also the melt freeze and rime/rain crusts from November prevalent on all aspects. After all of our our analyses on the different aspects and elevations, I decided that I will be very hesitant about going into the LCC backcountry on anything above 30 degrees slope angle till the end of January. There are way too many danger pockets. For instance one of the slopes we were testing on had about 10 lines on it from these snowboarders. After they saw our group's stability tests on that slope, they all bailed. Later after our class, our instructor for the day was able to get the whole slope to propagate and collapse by jumping on it and hitting a trigger point. Those snowboarders were only a few yards away from being in a very large avalanche.

It wasn't as hard to forgo skiing this new deep snow after seeing the dragon that existed within the snow pack. I talked with a couple of friends that are big into the backcountry and told them of what we found and warned them of the instabilities. I told them that the discussions today predicted that we'd hear about a couple of serious incidents by Monday.

After our first field session was over I drove up to Ogden for my friend Nazira's going away party. She now has to head back to Tajikistan because she wasn't able to obtain a work visa since she's been in the states for about 8 years on a student visa. So now it's 8:30 pm, I'm dead tired, and cannot fall asleep for a power nap for the life of me. Why was I trying to nap? Oh just because I had a indoor soccer game at 11:00 pm. As for that, we dominated the other team and played alright as a team.

So now I try to fall asleep and nothing. I last remember seeing 1:50 am on the alarm clack. The next thing I notice after I blinked was my alarm going off at 5:30 am. By this time, the second storm front had already rolled into Ogden and on was on its way to Salt Lake. Driving was miserable. There was slush, snow, and ice all over the road. There were a few times in which people, who were driving straight, not touching their brakes, and not driving too fast just spun out in front of me. I thought I was going to be in a big pile up at one point. It did take me almost 2 hours to get up to Alta.

So we grouped up and had a discussion about the avalanche forecast for the day. The forecast for the day was MODERATE. The question was asked if I agreed with it. I frowned and said that I thought it was wasn't as conservative as it should have been. Why didn't I agree with it? Well a moderate rating says that natural avalanches are very unlikely with skier trigger avalanches possible. I thought that there would be some natural avalanches today and that skier trigger avalanches were probable from our work done on Saturday. Our guesses on why it wasn't considerable were mainly along the lines of yesterday's huge temperature drop during the storm. That really helped to lighten up the snow and didn't put as much weight on the old snowpack. Today's agenda was more involved in safe travel and route finding in avalanche territory. It was nice because we finally got to ski. But to ski a lot, we had to skin a lot. This isn't the most fun thing for me since I was on regular telemark bindings and not on touring bindings that have a releasable pivot. After doing various stability tests, we dropped onto a 30 degree slope for our first run. It felt pretty good to finally be skiing, but we were still all very cautious, not wanting to cause a slide and get buried.

After we skinned up to Rocky Point we did another slope stability test session. We tried our luck on a steeper slope, and ended up getting some good lines in. We all, even multiple instructors, thought that the slope was going to slide. Honestly it probably could have if one of those hidden trigger spots was hit. As we were skiing out of that bowl up to the ridge, our head instructor Jake, also the head of the Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, received a call on a burial that just happened inbounds at Snowbird, 2 miles to the west of us. Jake booked out to the Alta resort and headed to the Bird as fast as he could. He later briefed us on what happened and I'll get to that.

We finished out the day with a couple of good turns and headed in for our debriefing. We were all awaiting news about the Snowbird burial. When Jake walked into the Alta library the whole room immediately turned to him and waited for the news. Jake looked as if he had just passed through hell. He had that look on his face that permeates stress, frustration, and despair. He told us that the girl was standing up on top of a buttress on Baldy when a slab broke above her. She was swept off this tall cliff and then carried over a series of smaller cliffs for another 200+ feet. The debry came to a stop on Chip's Run and she was buried. The search started immediately. They ended up finding her alive with a probe line. The sad thing was that she was carried over a lot of cliffs, buried about 5 feet down, and was buried for 50 minutes. The probability of survival drops to 30% at 30 minutes and drops further every minute after that. They started to perform CPR right away and then put the AED on her. We could see Life Flight try to get into her and it had to make 3 or 4 passes due to weather. It was a miracle that she was alive at the time but with that much trauma and that long of a burial, not that many people expected for her to survive. Sadly she didn't make it through the evening.

Some people around the area started to say that the resort was obviously negligent in opening that run today and must not have done avy control on that slope. I laughed at those comments knowing, and being confirmed by Jake, that Snowbird does avy control on that slope with the howitzer gun everyday (yeah the big artillery), that there had been over 100 skiers on that run before it happened, and I had been out to stability tests and snow profiles on similar aspects for the past two days. It was just a freak accident.

Anyway, I booked out of there to make it up to Ogden right in time for my hockey game. I was already dead from skinning 6+ miles, and now I have to play on a depleted bench. Yes I played like crap, and yes I was dead tired the whole time. This weekend warrior stuff sucks.

Groupmate smiling about the goods turns had


Day 2 Instructor Matt