If your're sayin low don't mean no wellxposted
{Quote}So as much as I would have liked to ski soli and meet and put a few faces to the maggot handles. When your first steady touring partner asks you to tour on his b/day I'm there. We had tried to summit Box Elder Pk a year ago from Dry Creek before weather turned crappy. Josh another rock solid partner and my wife arrived at Tibble Creek ~ 8:00 the temp was ~ 5. In the parking lot we ran into a party of 3 one who had patroled w/ my friend James. P,T and a splitboarder whos name I can't recall, who were planning on skiing Box Elder. They started first and tried skinning the SE facing hiking trail and soon bailed due to boilerplate ice.
gearing up
Timp o the morning
Sloggin out the skin
The second group would catch up as we would leaving breaks.
After ~5 1/2 hours we gained the Dry/Deer creek ridgeline.From there we continued up though the protected trees above the shotgun chutes.
Looking NW from saddle
The last 1000' the skin track got ugly and icey
We bootered in a few spots and eventually all gained the summit.
While chillin up top a party of two came up (from dry creek) making 9.
Some summit shots
And one for the guy making the snow and getting to it more enjoyable hope your not still stuck in Quebec
So the now 7 in our party decided to not ski from the summit but down a few 100' feet James Josh and P got ready to drop in James cut 1st and Josh cut the slope above him. Splitter stayed on the ridge above watching My wife has a fear of exposures and was pretty scetched and near tears as we worked down the ridgeline to access the low cut/traverse James had put in.T was working his way down w/ us.
Bam shit hits the fan James had skiied down to the top of the gully and Josh was skiers right and above in a safe zone of trees. P made about 6 turns before he released a wind loaded hard slab and started on the avvy ride. I was back of the ridge helping the wife booter down and wondering if I had got her in terrain above her ability. Splitter witnessed the slide from above and J&J were watching from their safe zones. I rushed to the edge in time to see the last 1000' of a 3000' slide . Kind of like watching shit on the discovery channel. So now it stops I cant see or hear anyone below. I call out and no one answers.things kind of go into slow mo from here. I want to drop in and find out if every one is ok, but I am unable to see the top of the slide path and have no idea if there is hang fire or wher my partners are. T decides to call 911 as we have cell sevice on the ridge but will not as soon as we drop in. This was a good call as it would not be right to set off a slide of that magnitude and not report it till later. It was late in the day and no one could say with certainty there was no one on the skin track below us. My Wfe tried to call J&J to no avail. I decided to drop in on their ski cuts and was able to call out to Josh who thankfully let me know that P had gone for a long ride(~1500') lost a ski and poles and had injured his knee. I relayed this info to Split T and Pam still on the ridge. The two others skied down and talked to T who was still on the phone w/ SAR. josh skied down the slide path to P and they were able to spot his ski and direct me to it . The rest of the crew took turns skiing down from safe zone to safe zone until we all converged and took stock of the situation. P was alright shaken upnd complaining of knee pain. we gave him some poles and decided that the 5 of them should start to ski out the slide path and Josh and I would hang back and sweep the slide path with our beacons recieving. . I probably shouldn't have been still taking pics butthings seemed alright so here are a few.
Looking down from the top of the slide
I belive the slide statred just below the trees in the foreground Josh was skiers right in the lower trees.
Another
Looking back up @ the crown
For the most part the crowns were 1-2' as the snow ripped down the gulliy it would tear out crowns in this range
P skiing down
a few more shots of the slide path.
Josh sweeping the bottom
The disposition zone at the bottom of the slide
By this time SAR had a plane in the air and were sooned joined by lifeflight. We tried to signal to them using the patting of the head and thumbsup that we were all ok, they landed and talked to one of us concerning the other party of Two who dropped back into Dry Creek (Alpine).
.
We get down to the trailhead to find a full SAR callout. We tell our story and do a breifing . The Fox news van shows up and since They "got change for a nickel" I gave em a few sound bites and a big thanks to SAR alhough they editted the change for a nickel comments and refered to BC skiing as cheating death they did a nice blurb .
A few obs Snow stability was checked on test slopes and discussed several times. We all felt conditoins were safe that day. Low don't mean no. I had left my avalung home that day, which I won't do again. I am not a big fan of portable radios (beater phones) but they would have come in handy in this situation. The addition of 3 to our group changed things and I trusted J&Js & Ps judgement as to where they dropped in, But we didn't have a solid plan as to what and where we were all going to ski. I was concerned with my wife and the situation I had put her in so I may have missed this discussion.
I'm just glad P was alright and we all learned a lot this tour.{quote}
Well yeah
