Decision Making In Avalanche Terrain

Quick time off tour near Big Mountain.

• We made terrain choices based on the forecasted avalanche problems and focused on seeking out signs of instability on safe terrain before committing to anything consequential.
• We identified terrain that was recently wind loaded by the snow and rime on the trees (windward slopes had no snow in the trees and leeward still had snow; rime grows into the wind). We looked for "wind tails" on the leeward sides of trees and rounded, pillow shaped drifts on leeward slopes.
• We found small, inconsequential, but steep, test slopes where we stomped on small wind slabs and cornices. Most of our work resulted in minor sluffing, but we did trigger one small drift a foot deep. On sheltered test slopes our sluffs were shallow and didnt run far. -
• We probed with our poles an found that even on windward, stripped slopes, the mid February sun crust and early February rain crusts were under 6 to 12 inches of soft, settling snow.
• We started by skiing a windward, stripped slope about 35 degrees and found no wind slab hazards, minimal sluffing, and pretty good skiing. -
• Given all that information we felt comfortable skiing a very steep chute on an aspect without much wind drifted snow. We ski cut the top of the chute first and skied one at a time to further manage our risk.