Avalanche: Sainte Foy en Tarantaise, FR

Almost half a K wide and 1.2 K long is a big avalanche. Good thing no one was killed.
 
All clustered in a tight group right in the middle of the Avi zone? Someone wasn't thinking that through all the way.

Also can't quite figure out why they were basically ski cutting the literal exact same line to start, slicing ever deeper into the snowpack. I always thought you wanted some variation so as to lower any skier impacts/weight on the sub-snow layers in any one spot.
 
EMSC":1058pp1f said:
All clustered in a tight group right in the middle of the Avi zone? Someone wasn't thinking that through all the way.

Someone (really everyone who was there) didn't think at all, period. That's possibly one of the dumbest backcountry maneuvers I've seen in a long time. However, skipass.com didn't do their readers any service when they wrote:

l'avalanche a emporté un groupe de 5 personnes, dont 4 étaient pourtant judicieusement placées dans une "zone sûre"

Unless I'm mistaken that roughly translates to, "the avalanche carried 5 people, even though 4 were judiciously standing in a 'safe zone'."

That's a complete crock of crap. Safe zone? What safe zone? They were standing in perhaps the dumbest place they could've been in. Some pimple-faced 15-year-old French kid just read that and thinks that he now knows that the safest place to be in the backcountry is directly beneath the skier in the middle of an avalanche-prone slope.

EMSC":1058pp1f said:
Also can't quite figure out why they were basically ski cutting the literal exact same line to start, slicing ever deeper into the snowpack. I always thought you wanted some variation so as to lower any skier impacts/weight on the sub-snow layers in any one spot.

Those were anything but ski cuts. That was just the traverse into the line that they wanted to ski. There was no testing of the stability of the snowpack done on that traverse, nor were they using a ski cut to try to trigger a slide. They just coasted in to their line.

Okay, about the only thing that could have been dumber than this video Exhibit A of unsafe backcountry travel would be if they really were ski cutting the slope with those four morons standing directly below.
 
Admin":3ebgv9u6 said:
hose were anything but ski cuts. That was just the traverse into the line that they wanted to ski. There was no testing of the stability of the snowpack done on that traverse, nor were they using a ski cut to try to trigger a slide. They just coasted in to their line.

Perhaps I phrased it wrong. As that was kind of my point. That the traverse they were all following (for no real reason I could see) into the general line turned itself into a stability test of the slope by the 4th and 5th skiers essentially but cluelessly cutting into the snowpack like that.
 
jamesdeluxe":1j37kqmd said:
Heh, I was wondering how many days would pass before someone here :brick: at these people.
What? You started it with your second post when you wrote:
"How did you like where the group was standing? :?"
 
Marc_C":2woagsom said:
What? You started it with your second post when you wrote:"How did you like where the group was standing? :?"
I meant that I was waiting for those here with extensive avy training/practice who could give more detailed criticism than my "that was a pretty stupid place to be standing."
 
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