Cornice whompin an essential tool of the trade? or essentially a trade of tools?

[skifishbum]

Winter Trundlin
yeah ive done it as prob most have
Time and a place for everything
Seems to me the wasangles northern powder circuit or other frequently traveled areas isn't the place
and when instabilties are so obvious even someone who tweeted or instagramed through their entire avvy 1 class should still be able to identify prob aint the time
when you damn well know it'll rip why do it?
discuss

[icelanticskier]

^^^^^^cuz it's fun/stimulating.

rog

[skifishbum]

bustin caps is fun and stimulating
but best done in a shooting range
or places were friendly fire aint gonna fuck somebody up

[icelanticskier]

true, but if folks choose to tour in lands of shitshow, they should expect anything and everything from all sides, up, and down, yeah?

rog

[skifishbum]

i expect anything and everythin but my point is if every swinging dick in the wasatch wants to get his yippie keah yea yeah avvy cowboy on somebody is gonna get whacked.
Which is why most people think trundlers are fucktards.
my pet peeve aint so much look out below vrs. you are denying the snowpack the chance to heal and robbing it of the depth that promotes stability

[icelanticskier]

I hear that too. i'm all about letting the snowpack, here, or there get deep enough to actually enjoy without the silly risk of hitting shit that lurks below. I mean if shits gonna climax from nature, so be it, but why take her to the ground on purpose with so many other spots more suited for skier use/compaction in low tide time. patience.

rog

[whipski]

Next best thing to a 5# bomb

[Telemarketeer]

Washing it out to the ground is a great way to push the reset and minimize depth hoar/ PWLs from early season snowfalls. Depends on your snowpack.

[icelanticskier]

Washing it out to the ground is a great way to push the reset and minimize depth hoar/ PWLs from early season snowfalls. Depends on your snowpack.

ya and just create another early season snowpack on the line, potentially. better to let the shit get buried deep and give it time. imo.

rog

[Name Redacted]

ya and just create another early season snowpack on the line, potentially. better to let the shit get buried deep and give it time. imo.

rog

Classic rog

[_Aaron_]

Great tool sometimes, bad tool other times. Like everything in snow... It depends.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I847 using TGR Forums

[spook]

why don't you just skin straight up eventual avalanche area and put signs down saying that in approximately 2 hours this will all be coming down.

[spook]

i've never been in the backcountry on snow, but it always seemed a little odd to be standing basically right on top of what you're trying to get to let go.

[summit]

cornice tromping led to a 3K' fall off red mtn. straight down
rip monica
b

can you link to this incident report?

[icelanticskier]

sick bastard^^^^^^^^^^

rog

[Rideski]

cornice tromping led to a 3K' fall off red mtn. straight down
rip monica
b

Happy to have tipped a glass with her if who I'm thinking. It was referenced here years ago but names were left out as far as I read so I did not ask. Sorry for your loss.

[F#*k you cat]

Found an example of what SFB is referring to, Cornice whomping on purpose without any intent to ski the line. said cornice whomping is good for the spansers and the instant instagram but does nothing to heal the snowpack. in fact this act is a measly showboating gopro way to keep the snowpack effed up. I agree it is a tool. point is that it is a tool to use to see if a slope is safe. going out of your way to stomp a cornice on a set of known facets/ TG snow/ depth hoar is just showboating.

on the flip side...some heavily trafficked slops are getting relatively safer with all the mixing of the layers from all the traffic in the wasangles. think upper days - cardiff - silver fork. not letting out any secrets here.

link here to the most nortious stomper white et all. http://utahavalanchecenter.org/avala...est-monitor-12

and http://utahavalanchecenter.org/avala...est-monitor-12

could not find the viddy of the cleanest mouth in the wasatch MSB. as she watched white stomp out one that cleaned out all of west monitor. maybe one of you internets pros can pull her up.

[theshredder]

I am not stoned enough (yet) to fully understand OP's verbiage ..... but here it goes..

I get the verbiage most of the time. its like shakespeare or something only cool and relevant.

Might be that the flip side is that wiping it to ground can allow the ground to cool below freezing and maybe set the snowpack to stick to steeper faces (by reducing snowpack temperature gradients). Could be how stuff gets so steep and gnar in AK without having to be in a couliour. Perhaps one of those Euros working on the SNOWPACK or CROCUS can break out the g-translate and chime in. Or klar, of course.

[skifishbum]

if your using a tool to provide a safe bed surface out, plan on skiing a similiar aspect, are wondering
if a certain layer will react to a cornice cut or block fine.
sent a few up on the ruth but pretty sure we were the only ones in the park at that time and damn sure the only ones on the glacier
if you just out in a fragile snowpack creating slides on terrain you have no plans on skiing just to start avvies, be it to report them, install fear, or like the roj says ya think it's fun and stimulating
i think it's whack
even more whack in a extremely crowded area with a shit load of don't know much but just bought the gearers
got a feeling when it dumps here it's gonna get real interesting and everybody stompin around trying to reset the snowpack is gonna suck

[theshredder]

if you just out in a fragile snowpack creating slides on terrain you have no plans on skiing just to start avvies, be it to report them, install fear, or like the roj says ya think it's fun and stimulating
i think it's whack

Yea thats lame for sure. I shoulda mentioned in my previous post.

It might be part of the learning curve for some though. I've wanted to cut cornices just to see what happens on occasion too. Just haven't found the right one.

[klar]

Might be that the flip side is that wiping it to ground can allow the ground to cool below freezing and maybe set the snowpack to stick to steeper faces (by reducing snowpack temperature gradients). Could be how stuff gets so steep and gnar in AK without having to be in a couliour. Perhaps one of those Euros working on the SNOWPACK or CROCUS can break out the g-translate and chime in. Or klar, of course.

wait, what?

Ground will warm up again to close to zero once there is snow on it for a little while. very cold ground would be better than 5°C plus ground but IMO if you want to reduce the temperature gradient it would be a much more effective to have a really deep pack. I'm not really understanding how you figure the snow would stick better if the ground is colder?

Is there actually someone on here who works with crocus? Ican't get my version to run properly bc the instructions are in french fortran slang. Could use some assistance.

[icelanticskier]

higher h20 count snow found in maritime climates will stick better to steeps as it stacks and clings better. better/more support/stronger structure

rog

[MagnificentUnicorn]

can you link to this incident report?

Well, she wasn't really kickin' cornice. Stopped at the top of Red, broad flat summit, got too close to the steep, east face and broke through the cornice. Took a big fall. Skis and pack were sitting unattended on the summit.
http://www.nwac.us/media/filer_publi...t-2-1-2011.pdf

[theshredder]

Ground will warm up again to close to zero once there is snow on it for a little while. very cold ground would be better than 5°C plus ground but IMO if you want to reduce the temperature gradient it would be a much more effective to have a really deep pack. I'm not really understanding how you figure the snow would stick better if the ground is colder?

Right. The ground surface would warm up fairly rapidly again after more fresh snow. And over permafrost/glacier wiping out the early season snowpack will still increase ground-snow temperature gradients so it makes no difference even there.

But doesn't snow stick to steeper faces easier in colder climates? I would think it does because you might not get that basal melt layer at the surface as often.

Also, it might not be too hard to set up crocus or something similar with a fortran based atmosphere model if crocus is a 1 spacial dimension, time-dependent model. The source of weather data and the method of downscaling you want to use could make a huge difference in how much work you'll end up doing though. (It might not take me long to do it with MM5, but I should add that with any mesoscale model you're always facing issues of areal coverage vs. spatial resolution, and which physical parameterizations will produce the best output for a given area/resolution. If the atmosphere model does everything reasonably well except for one critical day in the early season, it would likely mess up the entire snowpack model.)

[klar]

But doesn't snow stick to steeper faces easier in colder climates? I would think it does because you might not get that basal melt layer at the surface as often.

I don't think so. As rog said, warmer (=wetter) snow will stick better. The type of snow you can make good snowballs with. If you throw a nice, solid snowball against a wall it will at least partially stick. A snow ball of fairly dry snow that barly holds together wont stick. The quality of the snowball is more important than the temperature of the wall. Of course, if you throw the snowball at a metal roof that has been in the sun all day, it will melt and slide off, but I don't see a lot of scenarios where that would happen with a snowstorm and a steep slope.

If I am understanding you correctly, by basal melt layer you mean depth hoar, rather than an actual melt layer? Very cold climates tend to also be dry climates and facilitate the formation of depth hoar. You have less of that in warmer, wet climates. (Typical spiny places like Haines are on the wet & warm-ish coast, no?) In more continental areas snow can obviously also stick if it gets warm enough, which is why around here steep ice faces traditionally come in season in late spring/early summer, when you tend to have warm storms with a high snow line. (People seem to be ignoring this tradition with increasing frequency.)

Also, it might not be too hard to set up crocus or something similar with a fortran based atmosphere model if crocus is a 1 spacial dimension, time-dependent model. The source of weather data and the method of downscaling you want to use could make a huge difference in how much work you'll end up doing though. (It might not take me long to do it with MM5, but I should add that with any mesoscale model you're always facing issues of areal coverage vs. spatial resolution, and which physical parameterizations will produce the best output for a given area/resolution. If the atmosphere model does everything reasonably well except for one critical day in the early season, it would likely mess up the entire snowpack model.)

well yes, that is more or less what crocus and afaik also snowpack were set up for. my basik crocus version runs on a simple text file input with a bunch of meteorological parameters (hourly values), which you can either measure or pull from a model. You can specify an initial snowpack or start with bare ground. I haven't seen SNOWPACK in a long time but as far as I remember it does more or less the same thing. There are operational versions that have a kind of interface where you can input measured meteorological data as the season progresses. Both crocus and snowpack are stratigraphic, 1D models, although at least for SNOWPACK some sort of spatial coverage versions also exist (used e.g. for modelling permafrost areas). You could of course simply loop the 1D model for all the gridpoints where you have appropriate model data, but I'm not sure if you would gain much insight from that in terms of snowpack development beyond what you would figure out without the model. If you want I can let you know once I get it running and play with your input.