Well, Jon and I just left Tony's Iron Blosam group where we enjoyed the usual wonderful dinner with terrific conversation and of course much wine flowing. It was an appropriate end to an "interesting" day.
Plans were made last night to ski White Pine this morning.
Much planning, actually, including the usual perusal of avalanche forecasts, route mapping, and time analysis. Our route would take us from the top of Gad 2 up the Boundary Bowl ridgeline to a rocky outcropping at a false summit, then southwest to the Birthday Chutes.
Bobby Danger, Skidog, Tele Jon, Tony Crocker, Skiace, Ben and I all met up on the Tram Plaza at 9 or so (Tony was straggling a bit). We knew that we wanted to get out the Gad 2 gate before the winds picked up too strongly ahead of the approaching storm. We checked each other's safety gear and boarded the Tram, cruising down a freshly groomed Regulator Johnson en route to the Gad 2 chair.
Atop Gad 2, we entered the patrol shack to sign out and get some last-minute beta. All present agreed that the Birthday Chutes would be a good route choice for the day, and we headed out the gate.
The first part of the climb is rather steep as you try to make the ridge (I apologize for the quality of some of these photos as they're frame captures from the video I shot).
The climbing route ascends the west side of Boundary Bowl, up a ridgeline that forms a shoulder of American Fork Twin Peaks. The higher we went, the stronger the winds became.
They weren't, however, loading the line we intended to ski: the first Birthday Chute. In fact, a couple of Snowbird patrollers caught up to Tony and myself, as we were picking up the rear of our climbing party. By this point our destination was within view, and they agreed that our chosen line would be the right one. We pushed on, and caught up to the rest of the group.
Honestly, the most unsettling portion of the day was on the hike, not the ski, for near the top of our climb we had to ascend an icy slope with about 300 feet of cheese-grater rocks below. A definite DFU zone, but on foot, not on skis.
After about an hour and 20 minutes of hiking we reached the point where we'd click in. We paused for a bit to rest and snap photos before heading southwest into the Birthday Chutes.
What we found was thick, creamy, whipped snow. The next gully to the west looked to be wind-loaded, so we deliberately avoided that slope and doubled back to the first chute. We developed a travel protocol, identifying an island of safety below at which we would regroup. Bobby pushed off first, skiing the thick snow more tentatively than I've ever seen him ski. He reached the bottom and set up one camera. I remained on top with another camera.
Next to drop in was Ben. On his third turn, however, all hell broke loose...or rather the entire slope.
It only fractured about six inches deep, but it also gathered from both the left and the right, sucking Ben into the gully and carrying him down. Ben fought valiantly to swim, using every skill he'd learned from his Avi 1 class to keep his feet below him and keep his head above the flow. Both Bobby and I stopped filming immediately, instead concentrating on where Ben was heading and making mental notes on where he might end up. A rolling cloud of snow formed the leading edge of the slide as it spilled out onto the flats below, with Ben thankfully still riding on the surface. Some 600 vertical feet or so later, Ben managed to swim to the edge and come to rest.
He dusted himself off, and skied down to where Bobby stood, somehow remaining calm and cool despite the frightening ordeal he'd just endured.
One by one the rest of us skied down to the flats, staying in the slide zone to avoid triggering any lingering instability elsewhere. The base was rock hard, as the slide had stripped the slope of anything resembling soft snow. We gathered below, thanked our blessings that no one was injured, or worse, and continued onward.
After a broad open low-angle slope below the flats,
we regrouped again and looked back upward to watch three snowboarders ride the wind-loaded gully that we'd avoided earlier. They saw the slide that we'd triggered, but that didn't seem to do anything to dissuade them. We were certain that they'd release that slope, and remained ready to do what we could if that situation arose, but somehow -- and thankfully -- it didn't.
The rest of the run was relatively low-angle...nothing to cause any concern, which was a relief after what had just happened.
We encountered a lone skier skinning up and alerted him to the conditions above. We also stumbled across three who had just spent the night camping in a snow cave. I tried to call Snowbird Ski Patrol but got stuck in an endless automated phone routing loop. Eventually we found our way back to the Little Cottonwood Road, where Bobby and Skidog had earlier spotted a pickup truck to return all of us to Snowbird.
I walked into the Activities Office and asked to use the phone to call Gad 2 Ski Patrol, where they put their head of snow safety on the line. He advised that two skiers on the ridge witnessed the slide and called them to report it, at which time they closed the Gad 2 gate. He thanked me for calling the incident in, and we all headed off to grab some well-earned lunch.
When I can find the time this week I'll work on producing the video.
