Taylor Musings

This story first ran in vol. 30, No. 4, April 2012 edition of The Avalanche Review and is republished here with permission. Lynne Wolfe, the author, is also featured on The High Route Podcast where she discusses the January 24, 2012 incident on Taylor Mountain.

Some background

When you last heard from me, TAR readers, on January 23 I had just penned an editorial labeling myself as one of those people about whom I warn my classes, a human factor crucible, impatient for fresh powder. December drought had left the Tetons high and dry; two powerful storms stressed the weak snowpack and heightened powder fever. We submitted the February TAR, 30-3, to the printer the next morning, and I went skiing with two friends, also avalanche professionals who were intimately familiar with the intricacies and problems of the current Teton snowpack. 

The day

After 3.76″ of SWE from January 19-22 caused a huge avalanche cycle (see photos these pages), we were pondering where to ski on January 24. Mid-elevation trees were rejected out of hand; one friend vividly recounted the pockets of sturdy 3-4mm surface hoar perched on a melt-freeze crust that were well-preserved down in those same trees. A late-December hearty inversion had perhaps helped to cook the surface hoar and some of the widespread depth hoar with warm temps up high. And those were just the indirect problems to consider. Overnight temperatures had dropped to 4ºF with clearing skies; the first sunny day on a loaded snowpack. We opted to stick to the lower angle (33-34 degrees), skier’s left side of the south face of Taylor Mountain, stay in the shade and scoot out of there as the January sun rolled around south.

All the way up the southeast ridge we bantered back and forth, discussing and debating the merits of our arguments: snowpack, weather, terrain were all dissected for data and desire. I also asked my compatriots for input on the theme for TAR 30-4; we emphatically declared that today’s ski was just within our risk tolerance personally, but there were way too many unknowns to venture there professionally, on an avalanche course or with even the best ski clients. Charlie Ziskin’s essay on decision-making (see cover story) articulates the process we were trying to use.