# Skier Caught in AZ Avalanche



## killclimbz (Aug 10, 2007)

One lucky sob. We have a seen a lot of close calls this season. So were these guys packing full avy gear? Kind of sounds that way, but nothing is said of it. At least it was a happy ending.


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## AZred60 (Jan 15, 2008)

From what I hear, yeah they had full avy gear with them. There were skiing telemark, which is maybe the most active slide zone in the San Fran peaks. With the 7+ ft we got in less than a week from that huge storm, conditions have to be evaluated a lot different than in years past. And I think that is making some people over-confident. As far as I know, this is the only incident since the storm, which is almost surprising considering the magnitude of the slides we had during and shortly after the big dump.


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## linvillegorge (Jul 6, 2009)

I know just enough about avalanche awareness to be dangerous and that's why I take no risks. One would think that the fact that there had been 7 feet of recent snowfall that people would be intelligent enough to have it cross their minds that maybe, just maybe it wasn't a good idea to be travelling in an area referred to as the Telemark Avalanche Path. Sometimes it doesn't take a lot of training, just a itty bit of common sense.


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## killclimbz (Aug 10, 2007)

Let's not forget spatial variability either. Just because a pit is great in one spot, doesn't mean it's the same even 10ft away. That is why you got to look at all sorts of signs and information while you are out there. One spot is not representative of an entire slope.


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## AZred60 (Jan 15, 2008)

Absolutely right. I dug a pit on the southside of the peaks just a day or two before this happened. We couldn't get a fail from our compression test, but we did see a sketchy looking layer of almost pure ice with practically no penetration. For us, this layer was only about 8 inches off the ground, maybe because we were on a southern-facing aspect. However for them, I wouldn't be surprised if that layer had something to do with the failure.


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