Skier Found Dead in Avalanche Near Crystal Mtn

Ugh... another fatality in the PNW

Short report from TGR

Another sad piece of news, seems she'd been an Crystal regular for 50 years.  Very atypical winter weather for you guys I guess.  The cold smoke is nice, but you don't get your usual consolidation.  They had 100mph easterlies up on xtal on Wednesday.  That's when they think she was buried.  Heck of a day to be out.  If she was just outside the boundary she may have been near Joe's Badass Shoulder, which is one of the more prone areas I understand.

Looks like you guys get back into a stormy pattern next week.

That is sad news. Avi-s and chairlift accidents this season. One today had a guy climb the tower, shimming down the cable and cut a backpack strap that  the victim was hanging from, chest strap around his neck. Rescue successful, thank God.

IMO: This one was totally preventable... really makes you rethink going solo in any conditions.

Snowballs wrote

That is sad news. Avi-s and chairlift accidents this season. One today had a guy climb the tower, shimming down the cable and cut a backpack strap that  the victim was hanging from, chest strap around his neck. Rescue successful, thank God.

Seriously, I was thinking the  same thing. 3 hangers in a week plus the poor woman who fell off the lift and died. When it rains it pours

Nope....solo isn't ever going to be for me.  Too many things can go wrong, even if you are familiar with terrain and play it conservative.  No partner = no safety net, no support if things go sideways.

The woman who was killed this week was, they believe, in the skin track, not skiing.  The guy killed on Kendall Peak in WA back in December was found in the trees and might have been hit by something triggered above him.  In cases like that it wasn't necessarily a bad choice of slope to ski, although they may have put themselves below dangerous slopes.  In cases like that a partner might have made the difference between life and death.  

Last year in WA on the skin track below East Peak we came across debris from a sizeable avalanche, burying a section of the track in as much as six feet of snow, and this was well below the slope.  So you could get caught alone in a situation like that, when that slide came down, with no one to dig you out.  Anyone can get injured at any time, in which case a partner could be a life saver.

Tempting, but not worth it.  Sometimes the more experienced you get the more chances you might take, the more complacent you might become.  Not worth it in avalanche terrain.  If you need the solitude of the wild, to be in the mountains, there is always non-avalanche terrain to tour on, savings turns for another, safer, day.

Of course, we all tell ourselves the risks we choose to take are reasonable.....

This wasn't an alone issue.  Damn, this is a bad season, and the season is young.

http://flatheadbeacon.com/2017/01/06/accomplished-kalispell-athlete-killed-glacier-park-avalanche/

The entire valley is stunned and saddened.

http://media.nwac.us.s3.amazonaws.com/media/filer_public/b3/44/b344c9aa-6bb6-4f72-9783-c84387665d87/20170104_crystalmt_joesshoulder_fatality.pdf

Incident report is up on this one.  She was on Joe's Badass Shoulder.  A few relevant observations from the report.  Skinning  into a 40+ degree ridge in high winds, with gusts earlier in the day over 100mph.  Avalanche risk rated Considerable above tree line.  Strong easterly winds with potential to side/cross load NNW slopes.  Traveling alone.  Likely no slope evaluation (not carrying shovel/probe), on slopes that hadn't seen skier traffic in days.

Now that I spend time reading a lot of incident reports I use them to try and identify the factors I need to be considering when I'm out there, factors the victims may not have given thought to.  I feel for the victims of these tragedies, and maybe learning something from it is a very small way to glean some benefit from their tragic loss.  

Complacency, familiarity and comfort level with terrain objectives.  That's my takeaway caution for the day.  Chances are this woman, being a very experienced backcountry skier who was intimately familiar with her terrain objective, allowed her experience with the terrain to blind her to the numerous potential red flags.  Maybe not, who knows.  However, this is just another reminder, seeing slide pics from a fatality on the exact aspect I skied my first day out there last year, that the conservative approach, no.....overly conservative approach, is always going to be the way to go, for me at least.