Avalanche: Turnagain

We intended to ski North Cornbiscuit chutes and potentially Superbowl and over to Goldpan. As we approached Cornbiscuit my partners decided they did not feel comfortable skiing in the Superbowl cirque area and wanted to climb the standard CB uptrack and ski the south/southwest face. We were standing at the split in the skintrack that goes over to the PMS bowl and just decided to keep climbing when the North face of Cornbiscuit ripped out, crossed the valley floor taking out the skintrack in front of us, and filled the creek drainage/terrain trap. We spotted a group of two ahead of us who was just past the slide path. It looked like the person in the back was IN the powder cloud and pulled their airbag. We waited to make sure neither of them were caught.

We thought someone must have been ski cutting it and decided to continue climbing the west face. Who would ski cut something with people in the valley below? We continued climbing and as I approached bench on the west face I heard yelling and saw a large crown on the SW face. A friend who had been leap-frogging us was flagging me to come over to him. We approached and he informed us of the slide on the SW face and to follow him to an area where everyone would regroup to do a headcount. One member of my party stayed on the bench with a radio to act as a spotter for the potential search party. I gave my radio to someone in the search party so they could communicate with the spotter.

Things I Learned:

1. Some people become complacent about avalanche hazard when they see others climbing/skiing in the area. This is the persistent weak layer problem…. it took several people skiing the same slope on the SW face before it slid.
2. Always carry a radio. It was extremely cold and it became problematic for everyone who was waiting for the search effort to end because we were all very cold. We didn’t know if it was safe to go back to the car or if we needed to keep waiting/help and my hands and feet were freezing in the mean time. I have frost nip on my toes from standing there for an hour as my core temperature dropped.
3. We must realize that just because our objective appears to have slid, everything around it that has not slid will potentially avalanche on top of you. If I had been more persistent or convincing, my partners and I WOULD have been caught in the slide on North Cornbiscuit and carried into the creek and potentially buried. We were moments away from crossing that slide path.
4. Be ready with your beacon, shovel, probe, and radio if you are going to recreate in these areas. If you are out there often, I feel like a rescue is a WHEN, not an IF. Human factors are incredibly challenging to mitigate.
5. Listen to your partners. If someone isn’t comfortable with what you are about to do, you need to turn around. Do not try to convince someone to do something outside of their comfort zone/risk tolerance.

I skied a similar aspect on the SW face of Sunburst the day prior without incident. I felt that pushing out onto a similar aspect on a different mountain was within my risk tolerance. I literally said “I would be comfortable skiing anything in this area today”, and was definitely comfortable skiing the Southwest shoulder of Cornbiscuit. Moments later almost the entire mountain came crashing down around us! Lesson learned.