Crevasse danger while skiing

[I ain't lost]

I'm hoping some of our super-expert backcountry skiers can weigh in on this:

 

How do you negate the crevasse danger while skiing glaciers? I've spent my entire life learning the "ropes", how to climb and travel on glaciers, and although we all take educated chances occasionally, the basic rule is never travel crevassed glaciers unroped. Now, almost without exception, every posted photo I see of experts sking the glaciers, shows 'em unroped. Are you just counting on the weight distribution on skis to keep you out of the hidden ones? Are you crazy? I ask becuz, like a lot of climbers who also ski, I also blunder across glaciers on spring ski-mountaineering trips, hoping my experience will help me "read" the glacier and avoid trouble. But that's gotta be somewhat dillusional. Watchy'all think?

[jordop]

It's a good discussion to have, for sure.

 

Around SW BC, I have only once or twice taken a rope on a glacier trip and basically never during "high season" mid winter. I have, on occasion, discovered that I was "skipping" over some slots on the Sphinx and Forger glaciers where the convex roll made them hard to spot from above.

 

That being said, on a trip to the Comubia Icefields years ago, we kept the rope on almost all of the time and even had three full on crevasse falls. Katabatic winds and basically no melt create some wicked potential for trap door crevasse falls, and in my experience this has always been worse in the interior ranges than on the coast.

 

Boils down to weather/geography, your comfort level, and the balance of your risk/weight equation. Being preprared weighs a few pounds and invloves a lot of fawking around. And skiing downhill on a rope . . . might as well be snowshoeing baa

[ilookeddown]

Talked about here awile back

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/701505/fpart/1