This.... is a ski cut.

[theshredder]

^^ Are you perhaps from England?

lulz

[SquamptonBC]

^^ Are you perhaps from England?

lulz

Rats! You got me.

[theshredder]

shit.... really?

That was actually just a wild guess. Mighta been Australia or some other place that's flat and gets no snow too. Nothing specific against the brits, although they do tend to be pretty useless in the mountains in general. But the rest was just based on your butthurtedness and the fact that my take on it is the same as bunions: un-risky. And I've ski cut similar, albeit smaller stuff.

[SquamptonBC]

shit.... really?

Not even close dickface. Keep ski cutting.

[totaliboard]

That's not a knife!.. Oh wait, yeah its a ski cut.

[Bunion 2020]

How in the fuck was that un-risky? Controlled?? I had no idea avalanches were so predictable. You should have been there to teach everyone who died this week, maybe written the bulletins for us.

Satire?

If you know the person making the ski cut and their level of experience it makes sense. In my 30 years I have probably made 10,000 ski cuts like that. I got burned a few times. Maybe 15 out of that estimated 10K.

http://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanches/20683

BTW, you can't teach dead people because they are................

[Powow]

Why post that shitty video of a TV playing a video? Here's the original with a lot more info/content: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joZS8tV__7o

As for the "risk" of this: I have little experience starting avalanches, but intuitively, it seems like there is a range of risk that varies from "most risky" when you are below all of the moving slab, to "zero risk" when you are above all of the moving slab. It looks like this guy was skiing along a ridge, so even if he were standing on the upper end of the slab when it went, there's still very little snow above him to move. He might get pulled down the slope a bit, but you won't get buried unless there is snow coming down on you from above. To get buried from his position, you'd have to somehow get down the hill *faster* than some of the slab. Unless he were *trying* to do that from his position, it seems unlikely.

[whipski]

Thank a patroller for making the world safe for DEMOCRASKI!

[iceman]

That looks remarkably un-steep, is it that flat or is that just a function of the gopro angle or whatever?

[iceman]

Bunion, such as this?
http://youtu.be/LiCrpYhsvls

Or this?

http://youtu.be/4kl182WV4FY

Highway crews taking out dangerous rock, guys fucking shit up for the hell of it, or what?

[Lindahl]

That looks remarkably un-steep, is it that flat or is that just a function of the gopro angle or whatever?

Shit looks incredibly flat in helmet cam footage. 30 doesn't even look like it has a slope to it. I'd say add about 15 degrees to how steep things look. Its a function of the fisheye I think. Even 45 degrees looks like barely black diamond territory.

That slope looks like 40-45 degrees, based on editing lots of footage.

[PNWbrit]

Nothing specific against the brits, although they do tend to be pretty useless in the mountains in general.

With the greatest of respect.

Go fuck yourself....

[icelanticskier]

Shit looks incredibly flat in helmet cam footage. 30 doesn't even look like it has a slope to it. I'd say add about 15 degrees to how steep things look. Its a function of the fisheye I think. Even 45 degrees looks like barely black diamond territory.

That slope looks like 40-45 degrees, based on editing lots of footage.

Slope is 38 degrees. Perfect sliding angle

rog

[skiballs]

Isn't that the Park City Powder cat crew?

[hitek79]

I noticed that as he skied, he crossed a few animal tracks. It would be interesting to know how often they set of avalanches.

[Bunion 2020]

That is how the slide path, Dead Goat, at MLB got its name.

[Shadam]

2nd biggest killer of bears other than humans is avy's ... maybe

that patroller in the vid has prob ski cut that slope hundreds of times and know the slope intimately. knows how temp and precip affects all the little things inbound skier cant spell or comprehend. ski cutting is an adrenilen rush and fun as fark. I luv avy's, setting them off is fun, rewarding and early season avy's give us a slight level of safety as the season progresses. and on sleds, avy's give traction.
If you havent any experiance setting off avy's how can you make safe decissions after a bad incident involving a slide, hang fire springs to mind.all avy;s are different and a great learning experiance.

perhaps there's a reason nobody rides where we ride ...

[totaliboard]

and on sleds, avy's give traction.

come again?

[icelanticskier]

come again?

i believe he's referring to the debris fields as giving good traction.

rog

[totaliboard]

ah yes. that delicious debris. hope for soft slabs...

[Shorty_J]

I don't know if a layman can take a course on how to properly do a ski cut, but I'd like to take one.

Obviously it went well for him here. But I've been involved in a slide where I thought I was standing on a safe spot and it broke off uphill of me and I was on the bed surface deflecting huge blocks and trying not to get dragged down with it... which I think I only avoided because I had a whippet and dug into the bed surface.

My point is that I think it can sometimes be tough to know exactly where the failure is going to occur.

[totaliboard]

You almost never know. you can suspect. or make educated guesses based on a lot of experience. but its not an exact science. youre rolling the dice everytime.

[powtario]

Frenchman of old were tough as nails and must have had grapefruit sized balls. No wonder they invented Gas-X tubes. The Saulire is great to ski, but definitely would not want to get taken for a ride down it.

"More rarely, ski cutting is also used. This consists of a pisteur traversing a slope at a certain angle and speed on skis, this is often enough to weaken the bonds between snow layers starting a slide. Needless to say it requires a lot of skill. Jean Cattelin? and Emile Allais recall the work in the early days of Courchevel.

[JC]An avalanche has many anchor points amongst which those at the top. We cut those at the top with skis, the risk was to get caught in the slide. You need to cut at the right height and the avalanche needed to be ready to slide. The problem was when you were too low, if the slope went you were caught, I think we all got caught once or twice. They tell you all sorts of stuff about avalanches, that you have to swim for example, I was caught 3 times during piste control and was never able to do anything. Once, on the Saulire, I was caught by a small slide and turned to Xavier Creton? who was watching to say "look I'm having fun". Then I saw the whole slope go just in front of him and I said to myself "darn, now you are really screwed". I was 24 minutes under the snow before I was found.

[EA]I told the other pisteurs, "you go and control that couloir, I'll do the other side". I was sheltering under a rock when the whole bowl went, there was a lot of rumbling, at first I swam, it was a reflex but then I waited for the slide to stop. When it stopped I didn't struggle in order to survive as long as possible under the snow, what else could I do?

[JC]I had seen it all from the summit of the Saulire, it still scares me to talk about it, it was a white tsunami, Marcel Charvin had seen it all with his binculars and half an hour later it was he who found Emile with a probe on his first try. He was under two or three meters of snow. I knew that we couldn't keep taking these kinds of risks and we had to find a better way of controlling slopes."

http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Bio/Emile-Allais
http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Avalanches/Manual

[icelanticskier]

I don't know if a layman can take a course on how to properly do a ski cut, but I'd like to take one.

Obviously it went well for him here. But I've been involved in a slide where I thought I was standing on a safe spot and it broke off uphill of me and I was on the bed surface deflecting huge blocks and trying not to get dragged down with it... which I think I only avoided because I had a whippet and dug into the bed surface.

My point is that I think it can sometimes be tough to know exactly where the failure is going to occur.

My MO when performing a ski cut is to start and stay as high as possible so as to have as little slab above me as possible. If i feel like i'd hafta go a little lower into a line like to access a convexity to produced a result i will usually just move on to greener pastures unless i'm pretty damn sure i can make it to a safe zone. A real safe zone.

Tis risky bidness fo sho, but so is opening up yer eyes in the am

rog

[Bunion 2020]

I don't know if a layman can take a course on how to properly do a ski cut, but I'd like to take one.

It can be easily self taught.

Start on small slopes. Real small. Like 10-20' vert. feet of drop and < 50' across.

Get the feel on a small scale of where failures occur and what it feels like when a slab fails and releases.

You can learn an enormous amount from this and then gradually move to slightly larger slopes.

It will take time.

Edit to add; the most common error I have seen in ski cutting is making the 1st cut too high and thus ineffective and leaving your 2nd cut too low and dangerous.