Thread: Berthoud Photo/Conditions Thread (2009-2010)

Didn't see anything natural and I was looking across every chance I got. Were you on the Praxis/Dukes setup CG?

That was me

Be careful out there. At WP today there were slides in the Pine Cliffs and in the Bowl.

Went up today by myself, so I staid down in Current creek and skiied the rollers and toured around. Lots and lots of slides. It was actually snowing hard enough that none of my pictures came out except this one:



Lots of cracking and lots of whumping. I saw a large slide below the x bowls, one in the Z chute and another in the 5 fingers. The one in the 5 fingers had tracks going in. Anyone know anything?

Was hoping to ski the 110's, but the wind/sun have kept snow think on southernly aspects.

^^^^ What he said.

I skied over in Floral this morning and let's just say things are gonna get interesting! Floral was way to thin to enjoy but it was interesting to see what's going on, even on West facing aspects.

Everything I've been skiing lately in this area is essentially 7-15 inches of light and dry pow on top of about a 1 or 2 inches of hard crust and facet/sugar for 5 or 6 inches under that.

I'll confirm the sliding in Pine Cliffs area. Other noteables include most of No Name going last week, some small slabs below the fingers, lots of activity on lift gulley and Current Creek. Everything's been rather small(minus the No Name fracture that I didn't get the best look at the other day) but once it starts to snow... Thing's will light up in a hurry.

I'll be out again tomorrow and I'll try and get some good pictures of how things are looking.

So I'm pretty computer retarded and I'm a little drunk and if photos don't show up as I want them to... Don't be surprised!!!

This post is just to show how good it was... I promised a post with photos on the snowpack and I'll get to that in the next post.

Anyway, here's how it looked today:






Wife... Getting after it!




Wife... Claiming










I know what some may say about this line... trust me, we skied it safe. Noting moved, it's all good.

Basically we skied 100s, and 90s down to Current Creek. Things have started to fill in nicely with this last storm. Get after it!

Okay, last post worked well so we're going for two in a row!

We dug a pit today at the top of 100s. North facing aspect in a protected area. Photos below aren't the best but... hopefully the commentary will due.

Observations from today:
-8 to 14 inches fell yesterday depending on where you were at.
-95 cm depth
-(top of 100s) 30cm of light fresh snow on top of, 10 cm of wind effected/warmth effected consolidated layer on top of, 55 cm of sugar/facets including the semi-typical depth hoar.

*important note: Yesterday's storm (remind you, I am NOT an Avy Pro!), seemed to be bonding with the consolidated layer better than monday's storm.

Overall, East facing aspects in this zone seem to be the scariest at the moment (Most east faces in the area have some sort of activity... even below treeline). South slopes have little to no snow (i.e. 110s looks good but you shouldn't ski it). North slopes, as far as we saw today, are risky in wind loaded areas but getting better. West aspects haven't seen nearly the activity others have seen.

The depth of the faceted layer almost everywhere will be a MAJOR concern as things get deeper and more loaded. 2 more feet and... well just watch your step.

Hope this helps.




Tried to get a picture of the bottom 4 inches.

Pictures aren't the best, I know. But it's something.

has anybody skiied the pumphouse lately? was wondering how the coverage was...

thanks for the update and photos

I know the season seems pretty bleak so far, but I was checking out snotel numbers and found this interesting ....

Total precipitation from 1/1 to 3/31 (97-09 average - 11.7)
09: 12.9
08: 15.4
07: 11.3
06: 11.1
05: 12.6
04: 9.9
03: 15.2
02: 6.8
01: 9.4
00: 14.9
99: 12.4
98: 10.2
97: 10.7

So over the last 13 years, El Nino produced the 2nd and 5th biggest winter.

SAR, FS and the Cops are there right now. I'm hearing that the west side cliff slid earlier today and then there was a slide in Nitro. Call your friends and make sure everyone is OK.

not good, probably a ton of peeps up tht way today.

Drove through there earlier today on the way to Grand Lake and there were a fair number of folks skiing. Hope everyone is OK.

Not good at all. Was afraid of something happening and someone hinted towards this in the "Loveland Avy" thread. I haven't been out in a while fearing that constructive metamorphism has taken a toll on the snow pack during this recent severe cold spell.

glad you're ok NPG. Info appears to be slow and lots of the regulars aren't checking in...... positive thoughts.

GRAND COUNTY - An avalanche near the top of Berthoud Pass put rescue workers on alert on Saturday afternoon.

The Grand County Sheriff's Office says the avalanche was near the west side of Highway 40 and a person who saw the snow slide thought there was a person either very close or in part of the avalanche and was not sure if the person made it out.

Grand County Search and Rescue crews responded and did a search. They were helped out by Alpine Search and Rescue and a Flight for Life helicopter.

They determined no one was buried in the avalanche.

Originally Posted by fastfroggy

Grand County Search and Rescue crews ...determined no one was buried in the avalanche.

[knocking on wood] Hope this is true Bert has a good safety record going [/knocking on wood]

^^does anyone have any pictures of this slide? I'd love to see where it was and what it looked like?

I was driving the pass while the crews were up looking around. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me to take any pictures. And I don't know the area well enough to describe where it was. But the slide area was pretty huge.

Summary: This post is fucking worthless. Move on!

Okay here's a photos a of the slide and a description of what happened. I didn't see the first slide go as we we're hitching up from current creek but I saw the rest happen as we were hitting treeline on the East Side:



What I saw:
JeffreyJim, my wife, friends and I arrived back at the top lot to see the 1larrge fracture (red outline) that had propogated accross most of the cliff band. From where we were it looked natural.

We got to the top of HHA area and got a better look and could see some tracks along the top of the rollover just above the fracture (blue circle).

Just as we had gotten to the top of HHA the second slide went right over Nitro cliff (Blue outline).

Not 30 seconds later we see some random Joe with apparently no company ski right past the fracture line above nitro and move into the trees. (tracks marked by brown circle)

5 or so minutes later we see him ski out into the open to skiers left of Nitro causing ANOTHER slab right above him (yellow outline).

He then slows to a stop not more than half way down the hill to look back at his slide (green star).

We then skied the far left trees of HHA/Hanging Meadow area rolled back to the car and headed down the hill. 20 minutes later, buddy that we were skiing with says he just got an SAR call and is headed back up the hill.

Supposedly, the mystery Dumbass headed off into Current Creek and failed to call SAR to tell them that his ass was alright. SAR, Grand County EMT, Sheriff and avy dogs found no sign of anyone in the slide debris.

I should reiterate what I said yesterday that East facing aspects of any kind in this area should be treated with caution. SE -NE aspects are the large majority of what's going around here.


*Minor sidenote: I'm really hoping it wasn't anyone from this forum setting the skin track up the blind area of the Big Roll on the skiers left side of the Gaffney's/Nitro band. Not only was it a completely blind area from above to be skinning, but it was obviously a questionable aspect today anyway and there had already been a small natural release on that face 2 days ago. Comments like "It's not gonna slide again," made me think that things in that party just weren't really thought out.

*Other sidenote: If you were smart and played your awareness cards right, there was some good skiing to be had up there today.

channel 4 just aired some footage of the incident. doesn't seem to be on their website yet

^^ great post, thanks for the update. Glad no one was in there. That is a gnarly zone with a lot of snow above it.

Not surprised that face saw a lot of activity.

CG and I were up there on Tuesday, and that small slid well lookers right, now surrounded by ski tracks, was present, as was some other activity in the lift gulley/lookers right of lg area. From that alone and the CAIC report, I knew we wanted nothing to do with skiing that area. We skinned above the trees on that bench well above the roll with LOTS of whumpfs every few steps. That only confirmed further we wanted nothing to do with that slope - it had every clue that it was filled with land mines.

Sidenote - in the close call thread, I think this is another picture where just because you get whoomping doesn't mean you have to immediately bail. We were traversing in a safe spot, and it simply meant we continued on to our original target - different aspect where we dug a pit and found the snowpack to be safe to ski (still not pretty, but safe to ski when selecting appropriate terrain and following typical protocol - ski one at a time, safe zone to safe zone, etc.)

bngofast - thanks for all the photos and info. helpful info.

http://www.cbs4denver.com/video/?id=...nc.dayport.com

Originally Posted by bngofast

I know what some may say about this line... trust me, we skied it safe. Noting moved, it's all good.

What exactly would be unsafe with this line? I'm obviously a noobie with route selection and I've taken an avi 1 class but not much of it had to do with choosing a safe path. My guess would be that it's pretty wide open with not much of a safe spot if any. Is that a fair analysis of the line?