D2



The day before this tour, a professional outdoor photographer/backcountry skier was caught in a huge avalanche in the Silver Fork area of BCC (big cottonwood canyon). He was found, and his life was saved, by his skiing companions who knew how to use their avalanche rescue skills. Unfortunately, they did not use their best avalanche risk management skills; they were aware of the dangers, and saw warning signs on their approach, but were caught up in the moment. The full story can be found here and here . Avalanche danger was moderate the following day. To be safe, we stuck to low angle, low elevation terrain and headed to a place RD knows called powder park.

my camera ran out of batteries at the start, so all these pictures are from a new neuroscience student, EB, from the pacific northwest. Thanks E! unfortunately, no one took a picture of you! next time.



We started around 8:00 am and reached the first "peak" around 10:30am for our first descent.

along the way, we saw a huge moose!



this is me climbing.


RD. you can see in these 2 pics that the coverage is not incredible. there was a little bit of bushwacking that we had to do, but nothing too crazy. the more protected and northerly aspects had plenty of snow.








some shots of EV on the way down.

Snow was great. shin deep, creamy, and easy turning.

we dug a pit at 9000', on a North facing slope ~34-35º. We found things similar to what everyone else is finding. A dense upper layer that is quite well bonded and a loose, sugary faceted layer at the ground. A shear test proved that this lower layer was the weakest point. On our way down, we didn't see any activity, or anything that suggested instability. The low angle of the terrain that we chose (< 30º) and the elevation ( < 9000') probably had a lot to do with the riding conditions we were seeing.



Posted: Thu - November 16, 2006 at 08:07 AM          

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