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Colorado Avalanche Incidents Remind us to Keep it Tight when Couloir Skiing

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The High Route Editors

Photo of slide on Dead Elk Couloir at 10:23 PM after the slide had ended. Photo: CAIC

Photo of slide on Dead Elk Couloir at 10:23 PM after the slide had ended. Photo: CAIC

  Avalanche reports, submitted by a regional/local forecasting center or backcountry enthusiast, are learning opportunities for the rest of us. Daily routines here at THR involve looking at some interesting avalanche incident reports across North America and Europe.  Two recent incidents in Colorado are noteworthy. And they are worth bringing to our readers’ attention. Both incidents involve…

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  1. Colby Stetson

    Some rules would be nice. One of the simplest avalanche risk mitigators is not entering a couloir if there is already a party above or below you, common sense if you’ve taken a level 1. There are a lot of places to go backcountry skiing. Seems like multi-person and inter-party catch and carries have become routine in busy areas. This sort of accident used to be considered completely unacceptable. This trajectory is untenable; it’s only a matter of time before we have another large multi fatality accident.

    1. Jason Albert

      I spent much of yesterday poking around, skinning, thinking about the rules. Some would be/are quite clear. And then there’s the concept of following the rules, or, at a minimum, being less than myopic about “the send.” I imagine a time, maybe not so far away, when rules are mandated (possibly enforced), permits required, to ski more congested zones. Cannot imagine folks desire that. Along those lines, although not precisely a set of prescriptive rules, the Ski Kind program (a Winter Wildlands Alliance and Granite Backcountry Alliance initiative) sets out some basics…as in skiing kind. Thanks for commenting Colby….and yes, some rules would be nice.

    2. Gavin Hess

      It seems like we already have some common sense ‘rules’ in place, as far as taking on added risk when climbing below another party, avoiding skiing on top of others, etc. In a perfect world, these rules are followed in normal situations, and we avoid party-party incidents and conflicts. I suppose there is nuance between Rules (Laws?) and rules (ethics?) similar to climbing where we have some official Rules like no power drilling in National Parks, vs ethics of top down vs ground up ascents. I am generally of the opinion that the ski community can handle the task of community enforcement of lower case ‘r’ rules, as evidenced by the blowback to the offending party in this Quandry peak incident.

      In my experience, where things get more complicated is in more abnormal situations. For example a line that most parties ski top down, but a rogue group decides to ascend the line on a day with significant warming – is it then appropriate to ski on top of another party? Another real example is getting to the top of a run behind another group, and having the lower party pull out photo/video equipment and start to setup a photoshoot mid descent. How long does the party above need to wait on a photoshoot before they ski on top of this party? Obviously, being communicative, courteous and respectful of other parties is critical for these interactions to go smoothly (pleasant and safe). A major facet of courtesy and respect for other groups in consequential terrain is operating within your groups skillset and in an efficient manner.

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