https://www.summitdaily.com/news/one...he-near-aspen/
Condolences to the friends and family.
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https://www.summitdaily.com/news/one...he-near-aspen/
Condolences to the friends and family.
My sincere wish for peace.
I don’t like the way this season is going.
Awful news. These past few weeks have been rough.
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Damn. This sucks. RIP
This one is really gonna hurt some of our community members.
Aspen Daily News has announced the ID of the victim. Condolences to all in the RFV.
CAIC posted the full incident report.
https://avalanche.state.co.us/caic/a...inv&acc_id=693
"Skier 1 then quickly returned to the accident scene with Skier 2’s spouse"Quote:
Originally Posted by glademaster
brutal experience, sad shit.
Man that report is terrible to read, but so worthwhile.
That skier 1, by himself, was able to get skier 2s airway exposed in ten minutes in an approximately 1.5 meter burial after fighting with trees and not being able to probe, hats off.
Tough report to read. A lot of times I can read a report and think "Well, at that point I certainly would have done something different." This one not so much.
So sad to read this report - condolences to all affected!
I was surprised to see that the CAIC got a non-propagating ECT result on the culprit NSF weak layer the next day. That reinforces the message that a snowpit stability test alone can't be used to demonstrate stability. That said, what the flank profile did show was a difference of two intervals in the hand hardness scale at the weak layer, where the near surface facets were fist hardness with the overlying slab at 1F hardness. The same 2 step difference was present in the crown profile at the Tobacco Roots accident in MT. Any time I see that difference in layers within 1-1.5M of the surface I am going to think of it as a major red flag, propagating results or not.
Question for the snow nerds out there - how do you measure hand hardness of a thin PWL? For example, if you only have a 5cm (or 1-2cm) layer of near surface facets, how do you determine it's fist hardness?
Sorry if this is too soon to discuss. These recent accidents have been so tragic and easy to imagine making the same mistakes.
First and foremost, condolences to the friends and family. This was a tragic event and I am not trying to "Monday Morning Quarterback" here; however, would like to address some of the questions in the previous post.Quote:
Originally Posted by garuda
I would say the combination of a number of "Lemons" you should look at in the above scenario. The two step hardness between layers. Weak layer under 10cm, and the weak crystal type. All of those factors probably contributed to the failure. Your question regarding testing hardness on a small layer. When the crystals fall out in your hand and have no cohesiveness and are over 1mm in size and resemble facets, you are probably looking at fist hardness without any hardness test it is pretty easy to see just sitting in your hand. I hope this helps. I would not focus on just the two steps of hardness between layers and instead look at the big picture.
1. Two steps of hardness between layers
2. Less than 10cm weak layer
3. Grain differential between layers
4. Buried persistent weak layer (NSF)
Just my two cents and not designed to evaluate this tragic event. Just trying to answer some questions above.
Thanks. Agreed about the overall sentiment and not trying to sidetrack the thread. That's a helpful summary and good tip about the grain type/lack of cohesion. I've just been re-reading Tremper and thinking about snow structure lately and wanted to better understand the problematic structure that caused this devastating accident.
This is a tough one. I'm with you. I could have easily ended up skiing the same thing on that day.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cravenmorhead
@garuda I assume all surface hoar is F+
No fucking shit. Hell I'm pretty sure I have skied it in similar conditions. I had to spend most of yesterday in meetings about this and while I didn't know him personally it is a tough pill to swallowQuote:
Originally Posted by funkendrenchman
^^^ Same/same. From the report it seems the party was aware of the hazard and took a lot of steps to manage the risks up until the last run and that even seemed like a fairly cautious approach.