My dog Spider survived a cornice failure and 820 foot fall yesterday.
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The botton arrow ^^^ indicates where I saw dog tracks coming out of the debris. The fall height was mesured by my buddies Strava. We were walking the ridge scoping lines and Spider got too close to the edge. My partner was ahead of me taking pics and happend to be looking at Spider when the cornice failed. He said Spider fell at the fracture line and not the outer edge. This probably saved him from getting crushed by the a massive chunk of snow and ice that fell. I was 30 or so meters back and heard a loud thunder like sound. The size debris field indicates there was no step down situation or anything that would have further contributed to the possibility of a burial. Lucky doggo.
There's no way down that face. There is one place actually but not this year and not on this day as it is guarded by a huge cornice. Getting down to the debris field involved skinning up to the head of the valley (Big Simpson's) and skiing down. Spider's tracks indicate that he tried climbing back up that face a little further up and was not able to make it. 30 or so minutes had passed between the cornice failure and the moment below when we were reunited. The little dots mid image are me and my dog.
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In the truck with a pepperoni reward his feat of survival.
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I am cross posting all this to the Northern BC 2012/2014 Stoke, Conditions thread btw.