tvashtarkatena

It's the daily hours of rage that gets old.

But all that data at your finger tips just helps you point cherry pick the conditions better!

Spanking isn't the answer, Ivan. Now quietly driving away from a remote rest stop whilst the wee angel tinkles, on the other hand....

That's just because you were younger!

Regarding ice screw placement, there is no scenario where a positive placement angle is stronger than 0 or negative, per Blake's post. This was popular wisdom a while ago, based on a long standing misunderstanding of how ice screws actually work, but testing has since disproven it. Don't do it. Testing does indicate that a positive angle can make for a stronger picket placement in softer snow, hence the possible confusion, but it's probably better to deadman the picket in that instance, anyway. Ice screws do not work at all like pickets, however.

Nothing like a refreshing, mid morning dip... The assumption a solo glacier traveler must make is: if you go in, you're done. Not saying carrying self rescue gear is not a good idea, but... You haven't lived until you've seen roped glacier skiers attempt to link turns. It's an...art?

The new NWAC avi map is really kewl.

Study after study shows that parents who go for spanking also (surprise!) have a tendency to lose it and take out their life frustrations on their kids. Given their comfort for the use of violence to get what they want, these parents also tend to have more life frustrations to tweak them out than more together folks. Spankers/abusers (same same) often denigrate more peaceful parents as being 'too soft'. In reality, spanking is just a child in an adult's body indulging themselves at the expense of their defenseless, weaker children. It's a gross abuse of parental responsibility, a violation of familial trust, and, thankfully, also a crime in many instances.

I do not know if this 'alpine'.

It's high time we did something about these little money grubbing sugar whores. No mention of stick clipping alpine climbers? WHERE'S THE LOVE?

I always hope for an 'untypical' snowpack in WA.

Yup, our climate is obviously different from the Rockies. Still, it's the 'untypical' snowpacks that'll get you. There really is no 'average', only what's actually happening in that snowpack at that time, regardless of where you are. IMO, it's best to work from basic principles during each and every snowpack assessment. You'll be prone to fewer erroneous assumptions that way. The snowpack responds only to weather history and terrain attributes, not which state you're in. Wet point releases happen in MT and depth hoar climax avis happen in Wa. After 2 weeks of clear, midwinter nights following a big storm cycle, WA can start to look a lot more like MT than you might think, particularly in the higher terrain. Not as common a condition around here, perhaps, but we all live in the here and now, no?

Same question south of the 49th. Recommendations?

The principles of avi safety covered in any decent course address all kinds of avalanches, regardless of locale. We have all kinds of conditions, and avalanches, here in the PNW.

Any supporting links?

That '3 strikes rule' (3 errors in judgement) applies commercial plane crashes and probably many other types of accidents as well. If you've got a bad feeling about something, pay attention to it.

It's all weird, no? This accident reminds me to hold some beacon practice, which I try (and usually fail) to do every year. Start digging in under a minute (that's in controlled conditions, of course) is the goal. Most folks can manage that after a handful of tries. Also a good exercise to work out what first aid stuff you need for a combination of hypothermia and trauma. A foam pad and something to splint with are handy.

What would a climbing site be without the puffery? I read once that a 12 foot fall has a 50% chance of killing you. You might laugh, but you'll probably want to talk to my neighbor first, who recently fell 10 feet and broke his pelvis literally in half. He'll probably never walk normally again. Glad I have a stick clip now...

Ian McCammon apparently didn't think it was that weird: The Role of Training In Recreational Avalanche Accidents in the United States ABSTRACT: Avalanche education has become widely available in the United States, and yet trained recreationists continue to comprise over a third of avalanche victims. Does avalanche education really make a difference? This study investigated the relationship between avalanche education and victim behavior in 344 recreational U.S. accidents, and found that victims with more avalanche training did in fact take fewer overall risks. However, all of the risk reduction in trained recreationists can be attributed to better mitigation measures taken by these victims. None of the risk reduction appeared to be the result of trained groups exposing themselves to less hazard. In fact, victims with basic formal training exposed themselves to more hazard than any other group, including those with no awareness of avalanches. In light of recent findings in decision science, these results suggest that behaviorist and naturalistic teaching strategies would be effective in improving avalanche education. Edit to add: I have no idea what factors led to accidents over the weekend and make no speculation as to what I would have done differently or what the victims should have done differently. The risks I took when I was younger were inordinate, and Ian McCammon's work over the last 10 years has shed a lot of light on why I took the risks I did. This researcher concludes that the More Knowledge = More Risk argument is a weird one, too. Thanks for the data driven confirmation.

It's entirely possible that that's the case for you, but that certainly hasn't been my experience. I find the argument that people who dig pits and make rational decisions about which slopes to ski based on their considerably experience and training don't ever get buried and die on slopes that they've just evaluated particularly strange given the nature of the fatalities that occur in the backcountry every...single...year. I suspect that Rad has a beacon, probe, shovel, and avalanche training and yet he posted the following: "I am very conservative and rarely head into the backcountry because I am anxious about avalanches and recognize that I don't have the skills or knowledge to be confident I can make the right decisions to avoid making a fatal error. This means I miss some fantastic experiences, I'm sure, but I'm willing to make that trade-off." There's lots of people that fall into that group. They're less likely to take calculated risks based on confidence in their expertise. Consequently they're less likely to get caught in an avalanche and die than people who are prepared to assume those risks on the basis of their skill, training, etc. Knowledge is power. Judgement, however, varies. No one here has made the strawman argument you framed above, so I'll leave that debate to its creator. The folks I ski with are conservative. Even in the worst avi conditions, however, there are lots of safe places to ski, and that's where we go. If conditions are marginal, we stay off the more prone slopes, and tend to save most of the steep skiing for when the spring corn shapes up. I'm not sure what the point of the whole The More You Know The More Danger You'll Incur argument, other than Don't Be An Idiot. The more you know, the safer you can be...if you're not an idiot, I guess. OK. Got it. What am I gonna do different from now on? Nothing.

Strap a long enough extension ladder to your harness and you won't have to worry about going in at all. You can also aid up on two screws using makeshift aiders tied from the remains of your blown undies.

Kewl post, Blake.

Been skiing all my life, and never met anyone who got more 'overconfident' as a result of avalanche training. I have met a whole bunch of folks who dig pits and assess the situation in a rational manner, and ski more safely as a result, however. The more you know about avalanches, the more you don't want to get caught in one. Never even hear this argument, actually. It's a weird one.

Perpendicular to the ice surface or angled slightly down. Never angled up. Excavate any crappy ice to get to the good stuff before placing them.

awesome link, thanks. I'm not sure I can even give the ACLU any money anymore after the citizens united debacle. Ie, you're blaming the wrong folks. Well, it's always a balancing act, isn't it? You're never going to find an organization you agree with 100%. Ending the drug war, gay marriage, Citizens United. The latter was the only responsible decision SCOTUS could have made that wouldn't have trashed the 1st Amendment. Do you really want a government that can shut down free speech without bothering to prove any harm? McCain Feingold did just that, and SCOTUS rightfully struck it down. SCOTUS also left that avenue wide open: When congress wants to do the necessary work of proving a harm before restricting campaign contributions (as the state of Montana just did), you can have restrictions of corporate contributions...constitutional ones this time.