Palisades Avalanches

yungspliffy

yungspliffy

Member
I’m assuming most people heard that there was an inbounds slide on Wednesday which buried 5 guests and sadly took the life of a skier. What I find odd about it is that it happened right under the lift at kt22, which is a very highly trafficked area after a storm, especially on the first day of the lift opening. I’m curious what patrol missed before giving the green light. Unclear if they did any blasting in that exact spot where it popped but I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t. With all the new snow on top of almost zero base / unusually warm early season it seems ripe for an avy. It was a pretty good size slide as well(450 ft long, 10 ft high, 150 ft wide) so seems like it would have been triggered prior to opening. And now, after closing the resort for 24 hours following the death, there was a second avalanche on the alpine meadows side which buried I think 5 more skiers, everyone was dug out and 2 were hospitalized. Curious what people’s thoughts are on this. Do you think patrol fucked up twice? Or potentially getting over pressured from management to get stuff back open? Could just be a really shitty series of events but it’s a rare thing to see, especially two days in a row under these circumstances.
 
Not sure what source you are using but I cant find anything saying anyone was effected by this second avalanche, every article Ive seen says no one was injured.

Seems like an awful place to be a patroller this season.
 
nobody was injured in the second avalanche according to all reports. I don't think anybody fucked up. You can take all the precautions in the world and an accident can still happen. Sounds like patrols were doing blasting in the areas before opening. I think its most likely a series of unfortunate events with the snow pack and people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know ski patrollers get shit on but you can't put the totality of the blame on them in this situation. You could spiral down the loop of should they have done this or that? But at the end of the day you assume the risk when going out skiing.
 
topic:yungspliffy said:
What I find odd about it is that it happened right under the lift at kt22, which is a very highly trafficked area after a storm, especially on the first day of the lift opening.
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i think it wasn't open before, so it was lacking the skier compaction that you're referencing. therefore the weak layer you talked about later in your post was there to cause this slide. i think it was right toward the very beginning of it being open, the slide happened at like 9:30am right? i either read or assumed that the skiers caught in it were some of the very first few on that face

re: the alpine slide (in wolverine i think), i haven't read as much about it yet but i don't think i remember hearing anyone was caught in it?

anyway yeah, i'd need way more info to make a judgement on anyone but avies are not an exact science, you can't say 100% that a slide won't happen especially with conditions like this and it's simply a risk factor for skiing mtns like this

but it's for sure bad optics to have the death and then another inbounds slide so soon after
 
14579899:SofaKingSick said:
re: the alpine slide (in wolverine i think), i haven't read as much about it yet but i don't think i remember hearing anyone was caught in it?
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yeah just checked, according to articles no one was hurt in the wolverine bowl slide

also possibly callous side note: wolverine bowl is sooo sick. one of my favorite zones i've skied
 
I heard a few ambulances leaving the valley right at about that time. Would make sense for them to brush under.

I think you’re thinking of Beaver or Estelle - wolverine is the main groomed run between idiots and the D chutes.

and KT - those were not the first tracks down that section. Jeremy Jones skied it twice apparently, then saw his tracks covered with debris after. So not just a virgin pow situation- it was after quite a few folks had been through.

We all want to understand.
 
There had been multiple warnings that conditions were ripe for an avi. They shouldn’t have opened. Someone majorly dropped the ball on that one. Seems like there was too much pressure from management to open.
 
14579927:alpineplease said:
I think you’re thinking of Beaver or Estelle - wolverine is the main groomed run between idiots and the D chutes.

and KT - those were not the first tracks down that section. Jeremy Jones skied it twice apparently, then saw his tracks covered with debris after. So not just a virgin pow situation- it was after quite a few folks had been through.
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re: bowls: there's alpine bowl (off ward peak), then wolverine bowl is the bowl that includes the Ds, wolverine the "trail," and idiot's delight. then beaver bowl, then estelle bowl. but also, i think i've only read that it occurred "near wolverine bowl" so idk where exactly it was anyway

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re: first tracks on KT, word, but was it only skied by a handful of people before sliding? that would make sense and again, i think it happened around 9:30am so regardless there wasn't a TON of skier compaction to help right?
 
we can speculate for the rest of time but the reality is that it was a tragic event, plain and simple. ski patrollers work really hard to make the resort safe for us. i am sure they are taking it harder than anyone other than the friends/family of the deceased. the constant need to find a guilty party and lay blame at their feet is unhealthy.

appreciate what skiing is, accept that not all risk can be mitigated/avoided and just do your best to ski safe
 
IMO its incredible there are as few in-bounds slides as there are; Avalanche forecasting and mitigation is not an exact science by any means.

There's definitely a chance that pressure from management to open terrain quickly was a factor, from my understanding this is common for a lot of patrols. I've even heard of snow safety directors (basically head avy honcho on patrol) at resorts resigning in protest over these issues.

I wouldn't blame patrol by any means though, the 99.999% of the time that people ski avy prone areas without getting buried, patrol gets little thanks. And from knowing a fair amount of patrollers, a lot of them that get involved in avalanche fatalities or even close calls are never the same after
 
I saw a comment on one of the posts about the loss in the KT avalanche asking where refunds would be issued b/c they closed right after.

The audacity of some people
 
14579893:WittyCong said:
nobody was injured in the second avalanche according to all reports. I don't think anybody fucked up. You can take all the precautions in the world and an accident can still happen. Sounds like patrols were doing blasting in the areas before opening. I think its most likely a series of unfortunate events with the snow pack and people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know ski patrollers get shit on but you can't put the totality of the blame on them in this situation. You could spiral down the loop of should they have done this or that? But at the end of the day you assume the risk when going out skiing.
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Yeah not trying to put any blame on patrol. Avalanches happen. If anything I think the blame could be put on management pushing an already-late January opening, but I have no reason to point fingers with the current information. Not sure where I saw that there was injuries in the second slide but clearly I’m wrong.

Anyhow, Squaw side has so much avy terrain and like other people mentioned, there has been zero ski traffic on most of it, making it infinitely more sketchy. I’m not too familiar with how they do things up there but I know a lot of resorts, under these exact circumstances, will have patrol try to ski cut the slope. Which in this case probably would have negated the entire disaster, with the exception of potentially having to dig out a patroller wearing a beacon if they were caught. I’m gonna guess there’s probably good reason why this didn’t happen and I’m not very well-versed on avy control. But hopefully the reasoning was not so the customer can get first tracks while disregarding safety underneath your most trafficked lift.
 
14579989:IsaacNW82 said:
There's definitely a chance that pressure from management to open terrain quickly was a factor

I wouldn't blame patrol by any means though, the 99.999% of the time that people ski avy prone areas without getting buried, patrol gets little thanks. And from knowing a fair amount of patrollers, a lot of them that get involved in avalanche fatalities or even close calls are never the same after
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Absolutely, I know patrollers at a few different resorts as well, definitely a thankless job for the average kook. But any real skier gives props to patrol and lets them know that they’re doing gods work whenever they cross paths. Especially at resort zones that would be absolute death traps without the work they put in. But remember, at the end of the day, it is their job and they signed up for it. Snowpack knowledge, using explosives, being the first ones down avy terrain, making the final decision on to open or close stuff, EMT training, people’s lives in your hands. When shit gets real, it gets real fast, and we saw that this week. But yes, no one is to “put blame on” for the slide unless it comes out that management over ruled patrol’s doubts about terrain or that patrol did not do their due diligence prior to KT spinning. Which I really hope neither are the case.

**This post was edited on Jan 12th 2024 at 3:26:33pm
 
All the signs where there that an avi was brewing it was all ice underneath a shit ton of wind packed snow, i live in the valley and woke up that day at 6:30 to my house being blasted by wind. i definitely think that corporate was pushing to open kt. they posted something on the gram a day prior, and im sure the kooks would be pissed if they didnt open kt. but i mean at the same time i had a bunch of people that skied that exact same bowl and they didnt trigger anything, Maybe they knew it was dangerous maybe it was just an accident.
 
Yeah, the conditions were not very good given how there was effectively no cohesive base underneath that storm slab... but it also broke in one of the areas I wouldnt really expect it to - the aspect isnt exactly the steepest or sketchiest at all... its just a situation where they just got a bunch of snow, were primed to open KT with everyone frothing at the mouth... and conditions were in a form that's rarely seen quite to the extent that it was.

I don't blame patrol. I don't even blame management... I blame the bad snowpack overall that's severely difficult to read right now.
 
The first people to go on it started the slide. Patrol supposedly blasted the shit out of it. Thats why it avalanche mitigation not avalanche elimination.
 
14580216:skierman said:
LOL at the fucking idiots who think you can be 100% certain there won't be an avalanche.
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LOL at you replying to something no one said. Why did you have to eat paint chips as a small child?
 
14580027:Deez_Mcskis said:
I saw a comment on one of the posts about the loss in the KT avalanche asking where refunds would be issued b/c they closed right after.

The audacity of some people
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I mean I would be looking for money back if I paid nearly $300 and the resort closed down, but I wouldn’t be making public comments on the PR social media post about the tragic event. That’s just a rough look all the way around.
 
I keep seeing articles say the avalanche was "10 ft deep" but does anyone know the actual crown height?
 
If you don’t want to die in an avalanche don’t ski steep pow. Can’t believe people want more mitigation and restrictions just to feel a little safer. Squaw took every precaution imaginable these things can always happen maybe they should just move the resort somewhere less steep ?

Sucks because if I was one of the first chairs that day I probably go for this same exact line too.
 
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