rider69 18 Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 I Remembered the sun screen this weekend but the snow just wasnt there. We just had too much snow on top of an ice layer that was was too dangerous. We ran out to our line set off some avies on ski cuts and one remote triggered slide and back tracked out. It sucks to not ski but it is good to be carefull out there. Link to post Share on other sites
ippy 66 Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 Just from a wee lookie while sitting on lifts, its definitely sketch conditions out there... Loads of sluff slides, lots of wet slabs releasing, a tonne of cracks, some serious holes cropping up in random spots and all round its looking poor for off piste mischief. Wouldnt want to be on an open convex face in the magic 38 degree range. Would probably avoid anything over 30 degrees in fact. Beware the wet avalanche and creeping death. http://www.fsavalanche.org/encyclopedia/wet_snow_avalanche.htm It was kinda nice taking the dude through little slackcountry parts on akakan though... got to teach him about spotting, showed him a few slabs and how they can release and compared them to sluff slides, and taught him a bit about anchors and how many turns he should probably be taking before finding his little anchor off the face and wait on me to come ride through. Slackcountry basics, (its not like im qualified to teach him anything more than that), but its kinda nice doing it in a semi sketch, but not really that dangerous an area. We didnt hit anything that would slide (sluff) more than a few feet and even if it did it wasnt terrain for serious slabs - just mucked around in the banks on the trees and always kept him on the shallow lines (he couldnt have ridden a steep face anyways)). Link to post Share on other sites
rider69 18 Posted March 12, 2012 Author Share Posted March 12, 2012 my computer ninja skills are in serious trouble the older I get. We didnt have wet releases we had burried surface hoar on ice, with a tiny bit of slab and 10cm of more hoar. Dangerous. I think someone is missing in the Cortina area as well. Link to post Share on other sites
Chriselle 158 Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 Yes, sketchy out here today at Happo. Triggered a little slough myself coming out of the trees over at Sakka. Sure surprised me. Definitely staying on piste for the rest of the day. Link to post Share on other sites
ippy 66 Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 I posted that more for people interested in slack country safety but not entirely sure what the terms might be. Only rider triggered releases i saw in the whole 2 days at akakan (within the boundaries of the lifts), were point release (says ipps pretending that he hasnt just used the term from the very website he just linked ), and holes/cracks due to the rather rapid increase in temps over the last few weeks. Naturally i stayed off anything more than about a 25 degree pitch ("is this no steeper than a red run?" was pretty much my guiding thought), stayed in the trees with lots of anchors, avoided clean faces or trekked to areas further down the line that shallowed out the drop on them, avoided cutting as best as i could, stuck with lines and runs i was pretty familiar with, and stayed conscious of anchor points. As i say, i wouldnt have ridden anything over 30 degrees with an open face since its pretty evident just by looking about that the conditions are massively unstable. Indeed when you had a look at the surface slab that people were cutting up with their lines, you could see about 3 inches deep a layer of icy pellets (not hoar i assume since its too bobbly... in fact it felt kinda slushy if anything), which you could easily brush out with your hands. Didnt dig anything, but that alone kept me from straying onto anything with a clean reasonably steep face just in case. Loads of sluff slides though. But only one looked like it would have scared the pants out of the person that triggered it (it created a decent debris field about twenty or thirty feet below it... it was in that super sketch area - even in good conditions - under the lift that takes you up to the steep mogul run next to the onsen area). Link to post Share on other sites
rider69 18 Posted March 13, 2012 Author Share Posted March 13, 2012 The 2 days Saturday and Sunday had different problems which you have identified. Saturday saw a mix of new snow on a thin ice layer in the upper regions. That ice layer changed to a bonded layer but a very small section to the isothermic layer that was very unstable. On Saturday I had my best turns on low angle widely spaced trees or lift lines. Sunday say the snow change due to 2 maybe 3 factors. The temps dropped and the snow pack started to change buried surface hoar into facets. The there was either a wind layer or an evaporation layer that had a 10 to 40cms thick slab. On top of that was more light snow with more surface hoar. Fun times to be outside of the ropes not! Nice sunshine powder day today yet im still in my office doing almost nothing. Link to post Share on other sites
rider69 18 Posted March 13, 2012 Author Share Posted March 13, 2012 Does this work? http://www.snowjapanforums.com/index.php/videos/view-54-swedes-taking-over-hakuba/ Link to post Share on other sites
rider69 18 Posted March 14, 2012 Author Share Posted March 14, 2012 Sunny day in Hakuba and im stuck doing very little waiting for spring break to come along Link to post Share on other sites
ippy 66 Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 Does this work? http://www.snowjapan...ng-over-hakuba/ Ah sorry, checked it yesterday at work and it didnt load. I assumed though it was because the work filter is on. Meant to check it at home for you but kinda forgot Just tried it, this time the video loads, but the thing is buffering forever. So yeah, i assume its a work place issue. It should work. Link to post Share on other sites
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