Photo By: Jay Beyer
A glut of early season snow led to two slides within the boundaries of U.S. ski resorts this week.
Sunday afternoon, skier Heather Gross, 27, died after being buried in a slide on the hike-to steeps on Mount Baldy in the Eye of the Needle area at Snowbird Resort. The slide was triggered at 12:30 p.m., and Utah authorities and avalanche experts are still investigating how the slide happened. Snowbird and Alta are renowned for the avalanche prevention techniques, making this slide all the more strange. The resort extended its deepest sympathies to Gross and her family. Read the release here.
Also on Sunday, two skiers set off a slide in Blue Sky Basin in Vail, expert terrain located beyond the Back Bowls but nonetheless controlled by ski patrollers. Skier Matt Jones was caught, but swam through the debris and was only buried up to his waist when the debris settled. His partner was carrying a shovel and dug him out. “I can officially say that a slide is crazy scary,” Jones wrote in a report posted on the forums at TetonGravity.com “I don't want to ever go thru that again...ever. I am also ALWAYS going to wear my gear now, no matter the boundary.”
Out of bounds avalanches have been off the charts in this early season, as well, with one claiming the life of a 26-year-veteran of the Aspen Ski Patrol last weekend. Recent storms—and more coming—have left the backcountry snowpack with little to no stability. As Bruce Tremper, famed head of the Utah Avalanche Center, writes in his latest report: “Let's be clear: the backcountry is exceedingly dangerous right now. You will trigger an avalanche if you decide to ski a steep slope at the mid and upper elevations.”
That said, the chances of setting off a slide on a blue cruiser at your local resort are next to nil. But expert skiers traveling to the periphery of the resort boundaries—say, hike-to shots or remote bowls—should heed Jones’s advice to ski with a partner and bring a pack and shovel, if not beacons and probes. Here are some suggestions for gear from the editors at Skiing Magazine. Ski safe.
Adventure Medical Kits Thermo-Lite 2.0 Bivvy
Backcountry skiing is great until a storm blows in, temps drop, and you’re stuck overnight in a snow cave. Carry this 6.9-ounce bivy in your pack and it just may save your life. —Ryland Mauck-Duff, Contributor,
Click Herefor more info and other gear Skiing recommends.
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Pieps Freeride Beacon
Pieps thinks a $400 beacon is a big enough impediment to make casual backcountry skiers roll the dice. So they brought us the Freeride, a single-antenna beacon with a digital readout that’s half the price of others. It works on flux lines, which takes a little more practice to learn, but when you have it, you’re golden. —Jake Bogoch, Editor
Click Herefor more info and other gear Skiing recommends.
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Ortovox Grizzly 2 Shovel
The new Grizzly 2 has an extendable handle, a massive metal blade, and a serrated edge that slashes through the densest avalanche debris. And if your two-wheel drive gets stuck in a snowbank, flip it into hoe mode for chunk-slashing power.
Check Out other life-saving gear for the backcountry.
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Black Diamond Quick Draw 230 Probe
Probes function pretty much the same, but the difference between a good one and a great one is ease of assembly. The eight-ounce, carbon-fiber Quick Draw 230 is tapered at the end of each section, so it slides together in just three moves—grab, toss, and pull.
Check Out other life-saving gear for the backcountry.
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Black Diamond Covert with Avalung Winter Pack
From the get-go, the concept of the AvaLung intrigued me: As you're getting buried in a slide, you bite down on the device's mouthpiece and it delivers your poisonous CO2 harmlessly into the snowpack behind you till someone comes and digs your ass out. -- Marc Peruzzi, former Editor
Read More about this incredible backpack.
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