What's the safest way to hike up a steep slope in deep snow?
So I stumbled onto this GIF:
It appears that this avalanche was caused by the deep trail cut into the snow. You can see ski tracks on the slope, it looks like it's been climbed and skied a number of times, so it appears the slope was initially stable, but then this long deep trail gets cut into the side of it and all of a sudden the slab lets loose and slides. You can see in the video that the trail acts as a transform fault.
I know slopes can become more unstable later in the day after they've been in the sun for a while, so that may have also contributed to this slide, but I still think it's the deep cut trail that caused this slope to fail.
It makes me wonder if the avalanche would have triggered had they gone up a different way (switch backs, not following the same trail, etc.), or while wearing snowshoes/skins.
What's the safety way to climb up a steep slope in deep snow?
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/9928. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Short answer: stay near the edges of a big concave slope, near trees or rocks that could stabilized the snow pack, or at least on a convex ridge where the snow should be less deep.
Long answer: the trail that fractured is probably incidental. The sunlight was probably compacting & lubricating the snow all day, and if that guy hadn't triggered the avalanche, the next skier would have or it would have gone later by itself.
That being said, the guy in is hanging out in a bad place, as avalanches from above are more likely to funnel into his location. He's not there intentionally, he's trying to recover his ski.
I'll say that going straight up the middle of slope is bad for these reasons:
- a path through a concave area is more likely to be hit by avalanches triggered elsewhere
- skiing across the trail may have contributed to his fall
- walking up a nice slope like that wastes good powder, angering the snow gods
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/9929. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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