Those who don't know history
We started skinning from the Heather Meadows parking lot at around 9 am on Saturday. It was clear and windy as we crossed Bagley Lakes, but we were headed up Mt. Herman so we knew we would be in the sun soon. The NWAC forecast had warned against being on sunny slopes too late in the day, so T, M and I had decided to skin up the sunny side of Herman and ski a lap before it got too warm. Wind slabs were also mentioned in the NWAC forecast, but I had grown accustomed to seeing that and was more focused on the threat of sun, as I hadn't been out on such a warm day this season.
We followed the steep skin track up into the sun on Herman, feeling relatively protected by the big trees we were threading through. We talked about how there was some funky sun crust that hadn't been down by the shady lakes. In places well shaded by the trees it was still nice and soft, though. T mentioned that there might be better snow in the north facing bowl on the other side of Herman. I haven't been there before, but the I liked the idea of getting away from the time bomb of the sunny slope we were on. Sure, I'd take a look at North Bowl. I had a bad feeling in my gut, but rationalized that it was just from the couple of beers and a margarita that I'd had the night before.
We made it to the broad ridgetop by 10:30 am and ripped skins without much chit chat. The North Bowl was more complex than I had imagined. It is not a picturesque concavity like Mazama Bowl. I could see I path through sizeable fields of rocks most of the way down on the right, but there was a rollover that hid about the bottom third of the run. Down and left seemed more open, but with rocks on the left edge, and a big wind lip rollover blocking about the bottom half of the run. I didn't feel great about it, but T seemed casual about it, and now he was talking about skinning up the other side of the bowl after this run so we could drop into Mazama Bowl. I was more concerned with this next leg, as T's proposed skin track traversed a big sunny slope with cliffs above, and I was worried it might get sloppy. T suggested going up one of the more NE facing gullies that was still in the shade, and that alleviated my concerns somewhat.
We dropped down to a lower saddle to the left of the wide ridgetop. From there we had a slightly better view to the left around the wind lip. We could almost see all the way down the left run, and it look wide manageable. T felt comfortable taking the first run, and I encouraged him since he had more knowledge of the features on the run. As T charged down to the right I heard a woohoo from back up right where we had deskinned, and looked up to see a guy peering over the cornice, watching T slash his first couple turns. I gave a yeehaw, because T was a very fun skier to watch. But as crossed the rollover I saw a slab propagat around him, maybe six feet to each side of him and six feet behind. I couldn't see past the rollover below him, and soon he had gone over it and out of sight. I yelled SLIDE and then up to the guy behind us if he could see T. He could and soon I also could see where T had traversed out right at the bottom of the pitch to a safer looking spot below the rocks. Through a couple shouts over the wind and pointing of ski poles I understood that T was telling me to take the left run. I figured it was because the slide had exposed too much rock on the right hand run.
I dropped in a little ways to the little shelf above the wind lip so I could peek over it and scope the rest of the run. Directly below me was a large rock field, but run looked wide and unexposed farther left. There were some weird horizontal bands in the snow below me that I thought were long trenches scooped out by the wind. My couple turns to where I was had been in over a foot of semi-consolidated wind deposited snow, so I was a bit tense about more wind slabs. Although the left did not have any of the cliff exposure present on the right, the left side was also much more consistent, which now worried me. T had triggered his slab on a small convexity, and it didn't propagate far because to convoluted angles on that slope didn't allow consistent slab formation. Looking at the left side, I knew it was consistent enough to go big if I triggered it just about anywhere. But it looked like a clean run out, so I delicately dropped in leftward.
I traversed the width of the run nearly to the rocks that delineated it's far left side as sort of a delicate ski cut because there was enough snow above me that I didn't want to be any more forceful than I had to. I made a series of turns back rightward, not really linking them, but stopping, feeling and looking before I made another. Then I realized what the horizontal bands were that I had assumed from above to be wind scoops. They were a series of staunchwalls from previous slides. Because there were multiples I knew I would have to ski over them onto multiple layers of potential remaining instability, but I was also nearing the bottom of the run and the slope angle was mellowing out. I delicately mounted the multiple slabby steps and skied down and right back below the rocks and out of the runout zone where I met up with T. Motioned to M with my ski poles like directing a plane on a runway, and she understood and delicately followed my run. Now that I could see all of T's run, it looked messy. The skiable snow path zig-zagged multiple times, each time with cliff exposure below. I could barely see where T had triggered the slab, but there was a sizeable debris pile at the bottom of the slope. It looked like the debris had run over some rocks, maybe scouring them further. I asked T if he was taken for a ride in the slide at all and he said not really, that he was able to traverse out of it easily. He said he knew something was wrong when the snow went from about ankle deep to knee deep suddenly, at which point he stopped and the slab gave way about a foot deep, tugging him down, but not too forcefully. I said it looked like a bad slope to go for a real ride on and he said yeah, and that it was the slope that a guy died on last winter. I had heard the story and read the report on that accident, but hadn't put it together that it had happened on this slope. That gave my gut a wrench. Remembering the story of how the two men had been carried over multiple cliff bands in view of other parties was not reassuring. Turns out that wasn't the exact slope that got them, we still had that to look forward to.
M joined us and we started skating towards the exit of the bowl, no longer interested in checking Mazama Bowl. T warned us to stay high and left to avoid a cliff, which we did uneventfully. Then we had to drop back right through a gully, near the top of which I noticed a six inch crown that tapered to nothing at the edges of the gully. This gave another little gut twinge, but the fact that it had already gone was also rationally reassuring.
I made a couple good turns down to the gully, then traversed the hard slide surface and made a couple more soft turns before joining M and T on a gently sloping bench just below a small cliff and above a band of trees. As I stopped maybe ten feet above them, cracks shot out about twenty feet on either side of us, and then we were moving. T quickly skied out of it, M stayed on her feet with her phone still in hand that she had just used to snap some pics of me. I fell downhill as the slab levered my legs downhill and my skis sunk below the slab and held my feet back. One of my skis popped, but one held, so I couldn't spin myself around to even see where I was headed. T yelled your're OK your're OK and then we ground to a halt maybe twenty feet above the tree band, below which I could now sense there was a cliff. I said something unprintable, and nervously laughed, then realized that although my trapped ski was less than two feet below the surface it was cemented in place. T helped dig it out and I realized my leg was a bit tweaked. For such a slow, short slide the forces I had felt were almost unbelievable. My leg had been wrenched back over the tail of my ski, straining the top of my foot and deeply bruising my calf at the top of my boot. But I could still weight it and knew I would make it out if I took it slow.
I surveyed the aftermath around us. The after physics. The crown was maybe fifteen feet above where we had been standing, just below the small rock face that had been so comforting. The thickest blocks in the debris pile were about eighteen inches thick. I had been carried only about thirty feet. From where I stopped amid the debris there were shooting cracks going out and below another twenty feet, but the slope leveled enough to stall the slide before reaching the trees and the cliff they guarded.
I snapped some pictures before we headed out, through the larger debris pile from the gully slide that had previously seemed reassuring. We could now see that this debris continued far below, passing over multiple cliffs and grating through many trees. My imagination was not fun. We carefully crisscrossed the slide path on our way down, passing places where it was difficult to tell anything had been disrupted, and other places where trenches had be gouged five feet deep, turning corners like a playground slide. I imagine that ride would have been similar to being forced down a playground slide full of branches, with a dumptruck load of wet concrete and cinder blocks on your head.
We then crossed a larger slope that had been polished to ice by the debris, then had to navigate the true terminus of the slide which was topped with a pile of two foot diameter blocks topped by a couple inches of newer snow, maybe from the powder cloud because it was absent everywhere above. Few times have I been so happy to get back on the skin track at the bottom of a run.
As we skinned back up to the lot we saw two guys in the back of a pickup headed for the lot as well, and guessed that they were the ones who had been behind us. We caught up with them at the lot and they told us about how the first one to follow our skier's left run down the North Bowl had triggered the whole slope a couple feet deep and been buried up to his waist. The third time's the charm he said.
I do believe I learned a few things from this misadventure:
Always have a set plan, with less committing fall back plans. I made the mistake of agreeing to more ambitious plans as we went, involving areas I was less familiar with.Â
If we had set our plan and I had known where we would exit, I would have looked for signs of recent avalanche activity there, and seen the older slides paths that we had to navigate on our way out. As that area was not part of the original plan, I didn't think to look there.Â
Always listen to your gut, even if you think it may just be a hangover or morning sickness.Â
Worry about the run in front of you, not the one that's across the valley that you think you're headed for.
Take extra time to talk at the top of a run, about that run, even if the slope that you think you're headed for across the valley is getting sloppier with every extra minute it's in the sun.
If you are unfamiliar with an area, then skin what you plan to ski. We were confident the line we skinned up was safe as long as we skied it before it got too warm. And we knew it from bottom to top.
If a previous skier sets off a slide and makes it to the bottom, follow them instead of skiing a different line. Even if you have to boot over rocks to do it. Or suggest that they come back up so no one else gets exposed. The hangfire on a slope that has avalanched is typically less dangerous than a slope that hasn't recently avalanched.Â
Happy trails,
J