Mount Field & the Walk of Shame

Activity

Skiing

Total in the group?

5

People fully buried?

0

People partly buried with impaired breathing?

0

People partly buried with normal breathing?

0

People not injured (caught but not buried)?

1

People injured (caught but not buried)?

0

People involved?

1

Terrain shape at trigger point

Planar

Snow depth at trigger point

Average

Terrain traps

• No obvious terrain trap

Skied Mt Field. Decided to try and a new and adventurous descent that was steeper than the standard headwall route. We triggered a 5 - 10 cm slab (storm snow) that propagated 5 - 10m at the very top. The avalanche was a size 1 and ran about 400m (250m vertical).

We decided we would still ski the line.... That was a mistake. First part was fine, then got greedy and started skiing outside the slough path. I got knocked off my feet by a different slough (or bad skiing). I started to slide and wasn't stopping so decided to try to flip around and arrest, which just caused tumbling.... Then my slough started to hit me and I was in it. Snow everywhere, tumbling down the mountain. I came to realize I might be in a real avalanche here... I wasn't sure of the size while going for th ride, but it was big enough to be white everywhere, and toss me around. Eventually I said f**k this, ditched a pole, and used the other one to self arrest on the bed surface. I had slid about 150 m vertical down the slope but was fine. Soft debris was ~2ft deep, but stretched from me another 100m+ downslope.

In the process I lost my skis... I watched them fly down the hill in between roles, zooming out of view. A search ensued. Eventually (45 min later) we found both thanks to a great partner who tracked an interesting straight track that went straight down the fall line. My ski was about 1km from where I originally fell.

I did the walk of shame down a great powder run. FP = 35cm, blower, right side up snow above 2000m on shady aspects... Just a reminder for all you hot dog'ers out there that small slides in low danger can still take you for a ride. Pretty sure God, whoever, gave us a warning. We choose not to listen, so he said fine, if you don't want to listen maybe you'll hear this. Shwack!