Yesterday I posted the video “A Dozen More Turns“, which was played at Saturdays Northwest Avalanche Summit here in Seattle. The avalanche video, showing the real-life story of a group of friends enjoying some epic hut skiing was, and is, a reminder that no matter how much avalanche experience you have, things can go wrong. The skier who triggered the slide died from trauma, while another was critically injured and would eventually have his leg amputated. Although I’d seen this movie before it wasn’t until the morning of the summit that I heard Sam, the one who suffered the critical injury, was actually going to be there to answer questions and provide a bit more detail about the accident. To make a long story short, he brought a very large sense of realness to the whole experience. It was pretty moving.
There was a lot more to the summit as well, including discussions on high routes in the Cascades, the art & science of weather and avalanche forecasting, a great talk by Martin Volken from Pro Guiding Service, as well as a piece on stability testing. Below is a quick avalanche video provided by the folks from the Gallatin National Forest Avi center covering one, rather new, method for avalanche testing, the ECT or Extended Column Test.
Thats pretty cool. I’ve always wondered how they do that. I love skiing and I’m on the slops all the time. So this is a new incite I’ve never seen before!