Whiteface slides, Slide.

According to Facebook it may still be a while before the slides are open.  Whoever runs the facebook page said #1 slid in their preliminary check yesterday

Chris wrote

According to Facebook it may still be a while before the slides are open.  Whoever runs the facebook page said #1 slid in their preliminary check yesterday

I could not find "Face" book in my local library catalog. Is it a periodical / magazine ?

Denis.N wrote

Chris wrote

According to Facebook it may still be a while before the slides are open.  Whoever runs the facebook page said #1 slid in their preliminary check yesterday

I could not find "Face" book in my local library catalog. Is it a periodical / magazine ?

Haha. Nah, it's the FBI's photo album.  

From the Whiteface Facebook album, for the non Crackbook users.

Hi Everyone,
With all the snow we’ve gotten this year we’ve been getting a lot of questions about when the slides will open. Here is the latest.



A crew of five ski patrollers well versed in backcountry safety and avalanche awareness enter the slides at about 11am Saturday February 26th.



Armed with beacons, probes and shovels they hoped to open the slides to the public later that day.



After digging pits at the top to test the snows stability they preceded down slides 1 & 2 continuing to check the stability of the snowpack.



Just above the waterfall on slide 1 a small section of snow broke loose. As it cascaded over the falls it gained strength.



The resulting avalanche ran itself out more than a quarter mile down the trail were slides 1-5 converge and skiers exit to Slide Out.



The slide, seen here, was classified as a R3 D2. The R refers to relative size and is measured on a 1-5 scale 5 meaning that the avalanche encompassed all the available terrain. The D refers to the avalanches destructive power on a similar scale.



So long story short the snowpack is still unstable so it might be awhile before we are able to open the slides. Here is a link to more information on the avalanche raging scale
http://www.fsavalanche.org/NAC/techPages/articles/11_TAR_BirkelandGreene.pdf

We skied Whiteface last Sat/Sun.  Saw a number of people out there Saturday.  Boy were we tempted, but we followed the rules....

And now I see why we saw people out there........

Dennis-  It can be found in lower the mans butt crack of your avatar, the guy on top must be trying to access it!

thanks for the photos and explaination - it was really great to see the professionalism of the WF patrol.  This may help with the whining to open the slides more when the patrol clearly thinks its not safe.  If someone got swept over the waterfall with that avy it would have been really bad.

thanks for putting your bodies on the line to keep us all safe

Just got off Slide 3... They opened them today!  Not skiing so well because of a crusty layer.  Will be better as it gets chopped up.