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01-08-2014, 10:57 AM #101Above the fingers of death sits a delicate winter garden
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01-08-2014, 10:57 AM #102
Pretty obvious that CO mountain pass traffic and resort-accessed backcountry traffic is soaring. But quantifying that growth is challenging. SIA research shows big spikes in sales of AT boots (walk-moded, Vibram-soled) but that doesn't necessarily indicate people are skiing b/c as much as they enjoy a grippier boot. Beacon and skin sales are more slowly increasing. Splitboard sales have quintupled in the last three seasons.
The industry is struggling to define their responsibility as backcountry grows. Resorts - thanks to liability concerns - largely feel they have no responsibility. The Forest Service, which owns the land outside most Rocky Mountain - Sierra ski areas, isn't taking any responsibility, which is understandable. (Avalanche control would imply "safe" and it's impossible to make beaucoup million acres of public land "safe.") Backcountry gear makers are stepping up (see: BCA) and retail shops are seeing an opportunity to reach customers by offering avy awareness clinics. And non-profits like FOBP are playing a role.
It's cliche, but it does boil down to education.
East Vail avy reports from 1996 estimate as many as 50 people a day were hiking up to Benchmark Bowl. That number is closer to 400 today. Yet the last fatalities were in 2008 (January) and 2014 (January.) Before that it was 1996.
The February 2012 avalanche death of a snowboarder in Telluride's Bear Creek - arguably the nation's deadliest resort-accessed backcountry drainage - was the first since 2002, despite steadily increasing annual traffic in the terrain-trapped, avy-prone Bear Creek.
So the exponential increases in traffic (at least in East Vail and Bear Creek) has not necessarily translated into an exponential increase in fatalities. (Incidents? Could be another story. I know people who have had close calls back there and don't report anything.)
Why aren't fatalities following traffic spikes? Skier compaction? Smarter line selection? Educated, prepared riders? (Solid discussions on Interwebz forums?)
The high-alpine in central Colorado got blasted with wind last week, changing the avalanche scene tremendously. The early season backcountry honeymoon (where smaller snowpacks are easier to gauge) is over, right about the time it usually ends ... early January.
I keep coming back to this stat:
Eight avalanche fatalities in East Vail since 1986:
1-7-14, 1-4-08, 1-8-08, 3-4-96, 1-12-93, 12-3-92, 1-2-90, 2-26-86
Five of those were in the first half of January.On first
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01-08-2014, 11:13 AM #103Hugh Conway Guest
If education doesn't produce better outcomes how does it boil down to education?
RIP to the shredder who died too young.
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01-08-2014, 11:29 AM #104trenchman
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that education will have to be supplied in multiple formats and folks will have to want the knowledge.
this has not grown as exponentially as slackcountry use has.
b.
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01-08-2014, 11:33 AM #105
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01-08-2014, 11:50 AM #106
Very sad to hear and condolences to all who knew Tony. Any age is way too young to die in an avalanche.
Move upside and let the man go through...
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01-08-2014, 12:02 PM #107
I found this video on the Youtubez...it is eerie to see where people spend their time in EV and especially some of the zones this guy was in and just standing below that face that slid. I do not know the guy who posted this, and not calling out anyone. Just a reminder of how beautiful and tempting that terrain is. See 3:13 for a sobering view of an area that let loose, but could have been much larger.
I personally have never skied anything from Watertower over to the east and south (to CDC, NBA, Benchmark, etc) and only ski the north facing areas of Bighorn and Racquet Club. That stuff is dangerous, as well....but I feel safer knowing the tightness of trees in between chutes, flat ridge lines, multiple safe zones, etc (and also know the area better). Call it experience of acquired knowledge, but I do not have that with the more slide prone terrain and prefer to stay out of it if conditions are even questionable.
In any event, this is happening too often in the Eastern "wall" of EV if you will and as a community we need to attempt to share as much knowledge as possible about EV instead of hoarding it for ourselves.Last edited by PowTron; 01-08-2014 at 12:42 PM.
You should have been here yesterday!
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01-08-2014, 12:25 PM #108Registered User
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All good info. It may be helpful to not just look at the deaths but also the burials, partial burials, close calls, etc... The EV slide three weeks ago could have easily been as tragic. I wonder if you add up all the people caught in some type of slide, or even unintentionally triggering a slide in EV, that the numbers go way, way up...
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01-08-2014, 12:28 PM #109
Haven't had a spike in deaths but plenty of close calls every year. I wonder if the number if those has spiked? Lots of people ski EV and only EV everyday. It's their zone, they're comfortable and familiar. You can never take away the risk of a fatality when dealing with a zone like EV. Free Will means people will do what they do. How many people ski the Bald Spot with no gear or knowledge....LOTS. Miller Cliffs? Y chute? Or any other sidecountry area in Eagle County or any other county? In the world of backcountry skiing, it's all about making good decisions and many times you can get away with making bad ones. But you never know when that bad decision will cost the ultimate price.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
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01-08-2014, 12:41 PM #110
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01-08-2014, 01:08 PM #111
That jives with my experience in Colorado as well. Modestly increasing the length and difficulty of the approach/exit for sidecountry would drastically reduce the amount of traffic.
It isn't at all. Dropping in from the top of CDC is EXTREMELY dangerous, and probably the most dangerous line, period, in EV. It's something I've only personally done once, late season in 2010/2011, where the snowpack was very un-Colorado-like and had a good stretch of stability. I've split off from my group more than once to take the safer side entrance, and let them roll the dice. Even poking in from NBA is extremely dangerous, and definitely not something I'd be looking at with a considerable forecast. I only tend to touch that stuff only a few times per season, under the absolute right conditions (the rating has been moderate, but the conditions were NOT a normal Colorado moderate). You also want to know where the trigger points are, and where the wind-loaded pillows are, and how to enter below them safely. None of this is obvious, nor visible, and requires experience and time out there, as well as mentoring from others. That said, you're still subjecting yourself to a certain degree of risk.
Even some of the safer lines that are skied by huge numbers of people can have dangerous exits that will expose you to some crazy terrain traps if you don't have your route-finding and terrain management skills really dialed. You could make it through with total impunity most of the time, but if go the same route when the conditions are just right, a deep burial can easily be the outcome - and I've seen it often that, this late in the run, partners are not close enough to notice if you do get caught. East Vail is no joke, even the "safe" lines. As you mention, skiing the FULL ridgeline from Joint Point is about as close as you can get to safe, out there.
3:13 is actually Benchmark, not Old Mans/CDC. 5:50 is the lookers left side of Old Man's/CDC, the site of this accident. Radek has been pushing his luck out there, especially lately. He spent most of the 10/11 season in Benchmark and Old Man's Trees, and over the last two years has been spending a lot more time near King Tut's and at the poke into CDC, using Tweeners as a "safe" entrance. I hope this accident helps him dial it back. I've spoken to him about it before, but he's not particularly amenable to suggestions. I've skied with him some over the years, but after a miscommunication ended up with him "ski cutting" the top of the King Tut slide path, only to stop in the middle of it, I've realized he's a huge a liability. I've never been more stressed in the BC, as when he tried to get himself back out of the path and into the safe zone. That was a pretty scary moment.
I've personally known people that have gotten caught back in EV multiple times, some even twice within two weeks. There's a lot of scary decision making going on back there. I think the number of 'close calls' or people caught back there would be quite surprising to a lot of people. I suspect it's quite high, judging from the small sample group of the people I know who ski out there. In the last calendar year, I know at least 6 people caught in slides in EV (none of them reported or talked about outside a somewhat larger circle). While not all were slides with risk of severe consequence, some could have been, and several were. Judging the danger of EV based solely on reported statistics would be a grave error. People are pretty protective of their terrain and don't tend to report incidents because of it.
Another factor, is that the great majority of people that go back there, do, in fact, ski relatively safe lines. Only a handful of smaller groups tend to push it on the more dangerous lines. Ignoring the loose cannons, while tracks in those lines do sucker inexperienced people in from time to time, another factor is that you sometimes end up with a situation where relatively inexperienced people brush shoulders and make acquaintances with these smaller risk-taking experienced groups, and they end up viewing the more dangerous lines as 'safer' than they really are. I strongly feel that this was one of the biggest contributors to this particular accident.Last edited by Lindahl; 01-08-2014 at 08:27 PM.
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01-08-2014, 01:34 PM #112
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01-08-2014, 01:41 PM #113
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01-08-2014, 03:53 PM #114Banned
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01-08-2014, 03:58 PM #115
I’m getting the fear sweats just looking at the crown in the pix. My sincere condolences go out to everyone involved in the accident, and all family and friends of Tony. He sounds like an awesome guy.
FYI, the poma (Chair 22) was and is still closed AFAIK. That makes it a solid 30+ minute hike to the top. I had heard from patrol it was because of a shortage of lift ops (you need at least 6 to yell at people on how to ride the conveyor belt on the new Chair 4), but I wouldn’t be surprised if making it harder to get up on Benchmark has played a role in the decision to keep it closed, esp during the holiday junk show. I’m sure it’s cut back on traffic, but I’ve still seen a good number of people up there, even the continuing handful of solo skiers and jongs with 0 gear.
I’m not sure there’s a real good answer to keeping people from dying out in EV. Ropes will get ducked, people will still hike up there even if it takes longer and you have to walk to another bus stop. People will still ski the dicey lines under questionable conditions. There’s probably someone in Old Man’s skiing the edge of the slide as I write this. It’s a matter of personal choice and risk acceptance, and I keep coming up short on things we can do to influence others, and if it’s even warranted or acceptable. No one wants to hear Safety Bob talk at the top of Benchmark about what line they’re about to ski and if it’s a good idea, especially from a stranger. I usually reserve comment except for those standing there with a day pass flapping in the wind, asking if you can back to Two Elks from here.
My thought has always been that other people’s decisions on line selection in EV are not my problem. My buddy and I were talking about this the other day while standing on the ridge road, eyeballing CDC and Old Man’s. There were a few tracks and a pocket slide of storm slab. What would you do if you saw someone drop in and get caught? Now is it your problem? Should we be having candid conversations with each other at the top of the hike? In all reality it’s a pretty small group of people that are back there regularly, like Tony and crew. I wonder if it would help or if it’s even feasible.
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01-08-2014, 04:15 PM #116Registered User
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Whatever happened to "The East Vail Institute"? Only half kidding.
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01-08-2014, 04:36 PM #117
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01-08-2014, 05:00 PM #118
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01-08-2014, 05:36 PM #119
Saw Doug Richmond's presentation on Bridger, the expansion, and educating the populace this year at ESAW. He told a story of a girl who walked past the huge ass sign saying she was entering the BC, yet told her rescuers later that she didn't know she left the resort. However, he felt the efforts were paying off. One question I had for him is what would be necessary to allow patrol to hit the out of bounds areas with some limited control work on days when they know it is a sleeping dragon. He basically said that is an impossibility.
I still wonder why a system couldn't be set up where the patrol can do some control work in the area that is out of there boundary. Especially when there is a persistent weak layer that they "know" is going to eventually rip. Specifically, he told a story of when there was a known PWL, that skier compaction wasn't going to help, they were putting the word out but people were still skiing the slope, and eventually someone kicked off some hard slab from the ridge which stepped way down and slid big. Luckily no one was entrained.
I would think it would have to involve immunity from liability for patrol for not preventing a slide and from damage caused by a slide. "Side country" areas would have a defined time in the morning when it would be known that patrol may be throwing explosives. Everything is still the backcountry, you keep all the signs up saying that this area is not controlled, etc. This obviously isn't perfect and I'm sure there are many things I'm missing, but I can't really believe that its an impossibility.
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01-08-2014, 05:49 PM #120Registered User
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Economics and liability. Not many resorts are going to take the liability risk of sending patrollers to control "sidecountry" (the BACKCOUNTRY) (unless it could slide inbounds somehow), especially without any corresponding financial benefit. Those are just the facts. What you are describing above is...a ski area.
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01-08-2014, 06:35 PM #121
Intelligence is my downfall. In that I'm mostly confident my aptitudes put me somewhere on the bubble of average, even though 1 out of every three solo tours I take ends up in the willows... Any record yet of what the temp was at the time of the incident? It sounds like it was right around the warmest part of the warmest day in about a week? and the day after an ultra high radiation day. And how about today? Mini rollers peppering both sides of the valley from Frisco to the pass. Who's skiing there today and are they even pondering the impact of this dense (SWE to Precip ratio) early season snow pack. Check the records folks it's about as dense as it gets around here for Jan. I tried to chat up a clearly knowledge troller today about this issue and he contended that the snow was fluffy as ever...by early season, I mean early Jan, and by Jan I mean over the last 7 days.
Above the fingers of death sits a delicate winter garden
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01-08-2014, 07:10 PM #122
Just put up a story on the homepage with some input from this thread... thanks everyone for your honest and thoughtful posts:
http://bit.ly/1eI8gul"We're in the eye of a shiticane here Julian, and Ricky's a low shit system!" - Jim Lahey, RIP
Former Managing Editor @ TGR, forever mag.
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01-08-2014, 08:11 PM #123
I don't know about that stay west mantra, really. Problem is the heating on that side, runs wet so easy. I look at it more like pincers, with wind loading to the skiers right and wet slides to the left.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau
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01-08-2014, 09:44 PM #124
East vail has always scared me. The furthest east I will ski outside the gates at vail is mushroom bowl.... generally speaking, much safer
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01-08-2014, 09:55 PM #125
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