A bit touchy, eh.

[panchosdad]

Just so Mofro doesn't get put on the spot I was on the trip to Valkyr with them.

The Interior forecast had a SPAW calling out a buried PWL (surface hoar if I recall) potentially triggered by new incoming snow. I pointed out to many in the group that this interior forecast was very regional and that most of the observations were from the Monashees and that the forecast was Monasee-biased. I also had the advantage of Infoex so knew that the obs were all from regions of bigger snowpacks and based on more forecasted snowload. Valkyr is east of the Monashees, had less snowpack (almost a factor of 40%) and much less forecasted snowload.

Day 1 and Day 2 we bum-wiggled and toured lots of various aspects but on mellow ground. I established my own baseline of knowledge. I saw zero signs of PWLs. The snowpack only being 180cms approx I had pretty good knowledge having had a chance to look at various aspects by then. I also had the benefit of obs from all the other groups including Mofro.

At this point it's worth addressing your point about different levels of risk acceptance. I'll ignore the part about being more gnarly or bro-pro as it doesn't really help. Suffice it to say that on day 1 I was with a group that had similar risk acceptance to myself (Mofro, Zbo, adimmen and myself). On Day 2 I was with a group where half the group was significantly more conservative than myself or Shar. Their risk acceptance was of course their own personal decision but partially also because some of the conservative group weren't good skiers and had limited experience in the Interior snowpack.

On Day 3 Shar, I and someone else re-joined Mofro, Zbo and adimmen's group and skied the aspect and area they had worked over on day 2. I found their approach to be the same as mine which can be boiled down to --- terrain is always the answer. We skied steep slopes in small sections from anchor to anchor and built confidence throughout the day by making many observations throughout the day rather then the IMO overreliance on spatially variable Avalanche Canada forecasts of the day 2 very conservative skiers.

I'll make the followon observations

- I found the day 2 conservative skier we skied with attitude of armchair QB'ing other group's decisions to be annoying. She projected her conservatism onto other group's judgments as a justification to virtue-signal her own conservatism without taking other group's data-collection into account. That IMO is ego intruding into decision-making. I did not ski with her thereafter. Nice person but we have different philosophies.

- I deal with PWLs and binary outcome snowpack decisions such as low probability - high consequence decisions either by removing myself and my own flawed propensity to always want to ski by simply staying home or going biking. In a hut situation I would almost certainly do what Mofro did ie use terrain to manage the risk. I can't speak to what Panchosdad did because I have no idea what steeper slopes they skied (ie planar, big faces, pillows, steeps to anchor to anchor?)

Anyhow, perhaps a futile effort to get back on track

Terrain is always my fall back solution to snow problems, and we certainly did try to manage it that way. Some slopes had a paucity of safe zones, and we'd just ski top to bottom as that seemed the best alternative. We had both good sightlines and radios to manage those. For the most part we avoided large planar slopes, although the day we triggered the remote slide we were on some.

[cravenmorhead]

I found the day 2 conservative skier we skied with attitude of armchair QB'ing other group's decisions to be annoying. She projected her conservatism onto other group's judgments as a justification to virtue-signal her own conservatism without taking other group's data-collection into account. That IMO is ego intruding into decision-making. I did not ski with her thereafter. Nice person but we have different philosophies.

Is this different from "we saw data XYZ as evidence of stability sufficient to green light our lines and she wasn't convinced by our evidence?" If so, how?

[zion zig zag]

It's always interesting to watch discussions here evolve (devolve?). I've only skied with Panchosdad once, but that encounter didn't leave me thinking he's the type to make risky avy decisions (my own bias towards this discussion?). What were the slope angles from lookers left to right in that last photo?

I was on a recent trip where the comfort levels in terrain choice were split, similar to Lee's post, except that we were a group of four. It continues to bother me because I can't decide if they were too risk adverse or I was too risky. In addition, I wonder if I drove too hard for my objectives without considering the groups risk tolerance. So I've been questioning if I'm a bad bc partner because of my type a tendencies.

I posted a photo from that trip that practically begged for armchair QB'ing and there wasn't a peep, but such is TGR:

[meter-man]

^^^^funny, I saw that photo, and thought "hmmm, seems sketchball."

These post-mortems are sooooo hard to do. Particularly when you are talking (on the internet no less) about multiple slides over a long period of time. Panchosdad is talking about skiing over 7 days - the snowpack can change a ton in 7 days. And snowpack varies so much by aspect and elevation, proximity to ridgelines (wind-loading), size of slope, etc etc etc. That said, these slides all seem to be on N aspects. I'm curious if the failure layer was the same on all slides. It doesn't seem like it, but I might be wrong.

We spent a week at Vista in February this year, and we consistently got wind-loaded S to SE aspects to pop on a 10" deep storm layer. (Off Trundle Ridge.) That seemed to persist for the first 3-4 days, but we couldn't get anything to move after that. Thankfully, we did not have a PWL to deal with. We dropped cornices (or trundled them off Trundle), dug tons of pits, hand pits throughout. There were some reported wind-loading issues on W aspects per the area-wide forecast, but we saw none where we were. Instead, we saw wind-loaded pillows and sorta-slabs on E aspects. The point is that there are a ton of factors that go into assessing avalanche risk on any slope. I'd rather see 100 posts like Panchosdad's than 1 real accident report. Thanks for sharing it.

For those of you who say you'd be butt-wiggling all week on 25* slopes...that seems like passing easy judgment. It's always easy to react and say "you made a dumb call" than anything else. LL's go/no go thread got me doing lots of thinking, but I kinda forgot about it until I saw his post here. Seems especially pertinent.

For me -- and each person's risk tolerance is different -- I take into account area/region-wide forecast, what I've seen over the last few days, and then look at each slope considering the most recent data you have. All of that gets melded together into an analysis of whether there is evidence of avalanche risk on that slope on that day at that time. Choose terrain appropriate to managing the expected and known avalanche problems. And give yourself margins. And even if I decide that it's okay to ski, adhering to proper terrain and skier management is key -- uncertainty always exists and safety protocols only work when you adhere to them every single time out. Try to be good, and hope you're always lucky too.

[LeeLau]

I found the day 2 conservative skier we skied with attitude of armchair QB'ing other group's decisions to be annoying. She projected her conservatism onto other group's judgments as a justification to virtue-signal her own conservatism without taking other group's data-collection into account. That IMO is ego intruding into decision-making. I did not ski with her thereafter. Nice person but we have different philosophies.

Is this different from "we saw data XYZ as evidence of stability sufficient to green light our lines and she wasn't convinced by our evidence?" If so, how?

The conservative skier took only her observations into account and was unwilling to entertain discussion about other's peoples observations and had formed a preconception that anyone skiing anything steep was dangerous.

[zion zig zag]

The conservative skier took only her observations into account and was unwilling to entertain discussion about other's peoples observations and had formed a preconception that anyone skiing anything steep was dangerous.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what about the old advice that you go with the most risk adverse decision on the tour? That seems like a sure fire recipe to never ski anything when you are in a large, mixed abilities group. Group dynamics are hard. Even small groups as I've recently found out.

Back to the original post, what were the group dynamics? Everyone know everyone? Lots of experience? Any local knowledge? Etc....

[plugboots]

For those of you who say you'd be butt-wiggling all week on 25* slopes...that seems like passing easy judgment.

Well, I rarely give long answers on TGR, because it doesn't seem to be the place. At least not the place for me.
A different answer is that I'm 57, and ski a LOT in the BC. Even if I'm on a trip like that, (or one that costs a lot of money), I figure there'll be another time. Whatever. I really just like being on snow. I skate-ski or bike, (or butt-wiggle), on high avie days, etc.
BTW, I did not think panchosdad made a dumb call, at all. From the info and pictures, there seemed to be a lot of butt-wiggling.

[cravenmorhead]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what about the old advice that you go with the most risk adverse decision on the tour? That seems like a sure fire recipe to never ski anything when you are in a large, mixed abilities group. Group dynamics are hard. Even small groups as I've recently found out.

Skiing in the backcountry with a large mixed abilities group sounds like a nightmare regardless of the situation. I find it tough to have serious hazard-assessment discussions with any group >4.

[GoldMember]

Skiing in the backcountry with a large mixed abilities group sounds like a nightmare regardless of the situation. I find it tough to have serious hazard-assessment discussions with any group >4.

I'm with you on this. I don't like the dynamics beyond 4. A group of 3 is about ideal for my comfort.

[Dantheman]

ZZZ - That pic may or may not have been a dumb decision, depends on how long that slope was, how far it ran, whether it was a clean concave apron below or led to rollovers/trees/cliffs/etc. OP's last shot clearly had potential to get raked through trees. The thing that I fear most is a situation like what happened in A Dozen More Turns where a party gets no obvious feedback from a PWL on smaller slopes, moves up to something 5* steeper and shit hits the fan in the worst way. People do that every day and get away with it and I couldn't help but see parallels in pancho's and Mofro's comments.

The other one that really sticks with me is Alecs Barton's death. He was fully aware that there was widespread persistent instability in the snowpack, but he had been poking around and digging a lot of pits and confirmation-biased himself into believing that the zone he was in was an exception. Ignored the forest in favor of the trees and paid the ultimate price. Craig Patterson is up there, too. Seven years of full-time forecasting experience, takes literally one step too far and he's gone.

[meter-man]

Thanks for sharing that DTM. You must be both good and lucky.

From a story on Craig: http://ascentbackcountry.com/avalanc...rson-incident/

Conclusions

What can we learn from it? Constant vigilance is one clear mandate. We can never let our guard down. Every decision has implications. Another take-home point is that consequences are critical. Craig knew the avalanche hazard was moderate, yet he stepped near enough to be caught to a slide path with extreme consequences on this last, tiny portion of the ascent.

It also emphasizes how incredibly vulnerable we are with skins on. We must try to climb terrain that is significantly safer than what we ski. I had a parallel accident while skinning to my home run on March 31, 2006. I stepped on a small windslab at the same altitude on the other (west) side of God’s Lawnmower. The carpet was ripped out from under me, and I had zero control over my destiny. Gravity tumbled me over a small cliff and then I slammed into a tree. But luckily, I hit the tree with the back of my legs. Waves of snow tried to rip me off the small fir, and I was bruised from calf to butt, but I hung on and lived to ski another day.

The similarities are eerie, and illustrate another reality of backcountry skiing: nature is random, and shit happens! If you choose to ski in high-consequence terrain, such as the upper flanks of Kessler, you must make wise choices and have good fortune. Sadly, on April 11th, 2013, 34-yo Craig Patterson was not lucky, and those who had the good fortune to know him must carry on without a person of great energy, integrity, compassion, charm, charisma and competence. Let us learn from his passing and tread carefully near the top of Kessler’s NE spur, aka “Patterson Ridge,” and every other slide path we must cross.

On Alecs: https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanches/18137

RIP

[zion zig zag]

ZZZ - That pic may or may not have been a dumb decision, depends on how long that slope was, how far it ran, whether it was a clean concave apron below or led to rollovers/trees/cliffs/etc.

To be clear, this wasn't the line that was debated. This shot was completely safe and is an example of how a camera can make things look worse than they are. The slope that slid was probably around 35 degrees and where I'm skiing was less than 30 (28ish?). There was a very obvious ridge/roll that doesn't translate to a photo taken with a telephoto lens.

The other one that really sticks with me is Alecs Barton's death. He was fully aware that there was widespread persistent instability in the snowpack, but he had been poking around and digging a lot of pits and confirmation-biased himself into believing that the zone he was in was an exception. Ignored the forest in favor of the trees and paid the ultimate price. Craig Patterson is up there, too. Seven years of full-time forecasting experience, takes literally one step too far and he's gone.

These two accidents both stick with me as well. Both experienced backcountry skiers in terrain that I've skied quite a bit, and I can say that a certain amount of luck favored me on some of those days.

[LeeLau]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what about the old advice that you go with the most risk adverse decision on the tour? That seems like a sure fire recipe to never ski anything when you are in a large, mixed abilities group. Group dynamics are hard. Even small groups as I've recently found out.

Back to the original post, what were the group dynamics? Everyone know everyone? Lots of experience? Any local knowledge? Etc....

On day 2 we were a group of 5. Speaking only for myself that day was all about obs and I was comfortable with being conservative. So the conservative skier's risk profile was not an issue

We generally skied in groups of 4 that trip. Often smaller. Never all the people on the trip together

[panchosdad]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what about the old advice that you go with the most risk adverse decision on the tour? That seems like a sure fire recipe to never ski anything when you are in a large, mixed abilities group. Group dynamics are hard. Even small groups as I've recently found out.

Back to the original post, what were the group dynamics? Everyone know everyone? Lots of experience? Any local knowledge? Etc....

We had a mixed group, mostly strong and experienced, maybe trending towards more experienced than strong anymore. 3 were definitely less experienced, and by far the most conservative. One of our group members, a guide and avalanche instructor, took it upon herself to work with those 3 and get them into some terrain that was a big step up for them, kudos to her. Generally we would split 11 people into 2 or 3 groups each day. Group dynamics were generally great.