We got to the trailhead around 9ish, and began the moderate skin in, pausing to use our compasses and orient ourselves as to what aspects we were in the midst of. The first part of this skin in is a pretty mellow tour which steepens dramatically when you get about half way up the gulch. Having worked our way up to just about treeline and a wonderful grove of trees that I'm now going to refer to as the Hacienda, due to their extreme comfort we transitioned from tour mode to ski mode, wolfed down some snacks and headed off, getting more and more excited about the powder we were to ski. From this point the plan was to do a long traverse over to our chosen line, a little tree shot that had an angle of around low 30 degrees or so.
During this ski we decided very much so to play the buddy game, because there were some larger paths above us that were very concerning, so we went one at a time, moving from tree grove to tree grove. In retrospect, I remember skiing over these low angle areas and hearing a distinct hollow sound coming from the snowpack beneath us. It concerned me, not so much because we were on such low angle terrain, however this sound now is deeply ingrained in my memory.
We were about 50 feet from our chosen line and ducking out of one last tree grove to another when all of a sudden I heard a huge WHOOMPH, and the whole slope lowered beneath me. I saw a crack shoot out 15 feet in front of me, and heard Chris shout my name, and suddenly every thing started to move. I remember having 2 thoughts: 1)This can't be happening, and 2)I'm still standing up I need to ski out of this right now.
Skiing out of it (and praying every foot of the way) I turned around and instantly started yelling Chris' name as I'd lost track of him, he instantly responded from the grove of trees that we had just recently called our safe zone and where a bunch of huge avy blocks were now piled up. He was fine, he'd gone for about a 20 foot ride and was more than slightly shaken up, but other than that fine.
We took stock of our situation, took some pictures and decided to retreat to the bar.
So in further retrospect, what do I think happened?
Some shots of the aftermath:
The windlip that created the rollover and that the whole slope ripped out from, notice the cracks continuing to the left.
A shot from down at the ground, above the line that we had hoped to ski, once again, notice the cracks.
Chris crossing over to me and a thicker line of trees, notice the size of the blocks of debris and the obvious evidence of a hard slab on top of soft slab.
First off, I think that the hollow noise I spoke of above, should be paid attention to no matter WHAT terrain level your on, and I know that now. 2. Even though we were traversing extremely mellow terrain, the one thing that we both missed was that during our traverse, we mistakenly crossed a slope that rolled over into a steeper degree (after the fact we measured the slope that we were crossing and it was a prime 35 degrees, primo avy terrain, when the slope we had been on seconds before could not have been greater than 28). 3. I think that we missed these things because we were lulled into a false sense of security being that there were so many trees around.
So what has this taught me?
Biggest of all, I've found myself paying extreme attention to any rollovers that I've found in the backcountry and paying extreme attention to any sound that the snow makes. For example, yesterday at Loveland, during the opening of chair 8, I skied over a windloaded area that was making that hollow noise and even though I was in bounds I still felt my avy sense rise.
In retrospect, I'm extremely glad that this happened, neither of us was hurt we learned from the mistakes and besides from a nightmare here and there (I woke up saturday night, because I'd had a nightmare of the sound that the slope made before it ripped) all I am is wiser from this. You can read about things in books, take classes, but theres nothing that gets your instinct going like experiencing something first hand. Mom and Dad, if your reading this, I promise we were being safe, and from now on I know what mistakes to look for. It's pretty textbook avy safety that happened, it's not the big slopes that will kill you, it's the little ones. It did take me about a week to get up the gumption to write this blog post because I wanted to make sure that I had all the details and life lessons included. Be safe out there, and frankly, I'm going to be doing some serious meadow skipping until this bottom layer sends itself out.
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