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Ok this is going to be harsh but here goes.   Ippy Tommy Australia is not my responsibility in an Internet forum. I'm more than happy to share lines with people if I meet and ride with them. A rope

I can't claim to know as many patrol/rescue people at Niseko as GN no doubt does, but since a long gondola ride with one patroller several years ago (after which I stopped ducking ropes) I take every

I do not hold any view to protect any line. This Forum is used as an information gateway for many holiday makers which tend to be in the mid range level. I have met many SJ people and I'm not trying t

British student fighting for life after Chamonix snowboard accident

 

A British student is fighting for her life in hospital after a snowboarding accident in France.

 

 

 

 

Mimi Watts, 26, is on life support after falling headfirst into a snowdrift just metres off a red run in Chamonix on Saturday – the opening day of the ski season.

 

 

 

She lay there for around 45 minutes before rescue services arrived and had suffered cardiac arrest.

 

 

 

Emergency services confirmed the accident occurred just after 4pm in the Grands Montets, the largest posted skiing area in the Chamonix Valley.

 

 

 

The design student from Suffolk was heliported to hospital in nearby Annecy, before being transferred to a specialist unit.

 

 

 

Today, Miss Watts's family – her parents Nicky and Dominic, and brother Rory – were heading to France to be at her bedside.

 

 

 

Her aunt Shona Pollock said: "It is awful. Mimi was so full of life. She loved the mountains and snowboarding. She was completely and utterly her own person and this is just so tragic."

 

 

 

 

 

Miss Watts had moved to Chamonix two weeks ago to find work before the new ski season and was an experienced snowboarder.

 

She had texted her mother the day before the accident to say she had found a job and was "very happy".

 

Miss Watts went to a convent school in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, before studying costume design at Sussex University. Her father is a farmer and her mother an accountant.

 

Miss Pollock, who runs a catering company in Barnes, south west London, said: "Mimi was on the side of the piste doing little jumps when she dropped into a snowfall."

 

She had been snowboarding alone down the Pierre à Pic, a red run that takes skiers back to the hamlet of Argentière at the foot of the domain.

 

"She went just a couple of metres off-piste in an area dotted with small bushes and fell down a 1.5m 'hole' created by snow ploughs," said a source close to the emergency services.

 

"She fell head first into thick snow and was knocked unconscious." "She had already been in cardiac arrest for dozens of minutes by the time rescue services reached the scene," he said.

 

Authorities said weather conditions had been good.

 

It is understood that Watts, who was said to be an experienced snowboarder, had only been in France for a few weeks before the accident occurred.

 

Spokesmen for the local hospitals were unavailable for comment.

 

Les Grand Montets is situated above Argentière and measures more than 1800 hectares in size.

 

Popular with British tourists, experts say it offers some of the hardest pistes in Europe.

 

Miss Pollock said French police only managed to notify the family a day after the accident as Mimi was not wearing any identification when she fell.

 

She added: "Mimi had a huge passion for life. She loved animals and used to race Shetland ponies. It is so sad." A 35-year old French skier was found dead on Saturday night hundred metres off the pistes of the La Clusaz resort in Haute-Savoie after hitting a tree. His wife reported his disappearance at around 8pm. Police located his body he five hours later under 1.5m of snow via a GPS signal from his mobile phone.

 

A local ski expert said: "There is always a risk when skiing off piste, even a few metres from the slopes, particularly at high speed."

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Could you repost that tubby in a larger font size? It's so hard to read! :p

 

Well I know how non existent the Aussie Ozone layer is, so I printed big to counteract the solar radiation induced cataracts that you all must have. :p

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The private company that operates the Cypress Mountain ski area on Vancouver’s North Shore says it plans to present a bill for $10,000 to a snowboarder who became lost after he went out of bounds Sunday,triggering a three-day search that ended with his rescue Tuesday night.

Joffrey Koeman of Cypress Mountain told CBC News Wednesday that he was pleased that wayward snowboarder Sebastien Boucher was found alive, but said the man would be asked to help pay for his rescue.

Koeman said that in order to end up where he did, Boucher, 33, of West Vancouver, had to have ignored and disobeyed a series of warning signs and then either climbed over or crawled under a boundary rope.

Koeman said any payment from Boucher would be donated to the North Shore Search and Rescue Society, which conducted the successful search.

Boucher has a different take on how his misadventure unfolded, however.

Says he was distracted by tragic news

 

In an exclusive interview with CBC News Wednesday, Boucher said he was on his way to the ski area when he learned that a good friend had died. He said he went ahead onto the slopes but was terribly distracted, missed a turn and became lost.

“I know people criticize, say, ‘Oh this guy's stupid, he shouldn't be doing that, he deserves it.’ But people don't know. If you lose your best friend, you tell me how you feel, you tell me how you think. I shouldn't have even been snowboarding. I should've just went home.”

Boucher, a director of finance with the National Bank of Canada, said he is aware he might get a bill from Cypress Mountain to help pay for his rescue, but committed only to raising money for the North Shore Search and Rescue Society.

Boucher said he survived the freezing nights in the hazardous North Shore wilderness, in part, by using his own urine in a zip lock bag as a kind of hot water bottle.

He also said he climbed down a sheer 30-metre cliff by jumping from tree branch to tree branch.

“Even the guys, when they found me, they said ‘How did you get down here?’ I said ‘I jumped.’ He said … ‘You're an animal. I can't believe you're still walking and talking after this.’”

Boucher was airlifted out to safety Tuesday night with little more than cuts and bruises.

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If his story about his friend dying and affecting his judgement is true, you can't really fault him for being irrational. If that was not the real reason he went out of bounds, on the other hand, it would be pretty low of him to use the death of a friend as an excuse. All else aside, he did well to survive without serious injury and seems to have been rather resourceful; using his urine as a heat source was a good idea.

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Im pretty sure it doesnt matter for what reason you go off piste or duck a rope. If you head out of bounds, youre liable for the rescue. You cant just make a wrong turn. The only way he can get out of this is if he can show that the resort boundaries werent clearly marked and thus they were actually endangering him by not clearly marking them. If the resort marks its boundaries though hes goint to be liable for a rescue... it doesnt matter what state of mind hes in at the time. If hes riding on the resort, bought a ticket, and became the responsibility of the resorts ski patrol to keep him nice and safe, then part of that agreement is that he stays within the boundaries. Im pretty sure every decent size resort will have an army of legal disclaimers indicating as much on their ticket - or indicating that the ticket holder agrees to abide by the resort rules listed clearly (and accessible) elsewhere.

 

That all being said, I did once scare the pants out of my mates once by er, taking a wrong turning and riding across to moiwa from annupuri. I was just following some other dudes in front of me and wondering where they were off too when the next thing i know im in moiwa. :) The two people i was riding with always rode way the hell ahead of me since they were more experienced, so really its their fault for not stopping in appropriate places to keep an eye on me. :p (its my fault). When i arrived back at the lodge i got a hug from one of them. Theyd both been sitting there for a couple of hours deciding whether or not they should contact ski patrol. Ooops. Wonder what the situation would have been in that case? Probably liable i guess. But then again very few ropes or markers down there if i remember and it actually comes off the side of the piste and into the trees rather than has to be done via the gates (ive ridden to moiwa both from the gates and from near the bottom of annupuri on different occasions. I dont honestly remember any marking of the boundaries, or ropes, or anything like that on the bottom (though the gates obvously carry disclaimers) - though memory is deceptive).

 

I was actually just wondering if we might want to catalogue these events in a single thread. It would actually help raise aweareness if theyre all in one place and can easily stand as a reference on the dangers of slackcountry riding. I mean they can be in here, but then people have to go through 8 pages of argument to get to the actual incidents. I also think its better than having a thread for each serious incident so to speak because we end up chatting about that one incident then a week later its off the front page and we forget about it. I like consolidation precisely because it amplifies the message and creates a more powerful statement.

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Can somebody tell me how dangerous Rusutsu is behind the ropes? Because if there is one place that does not seem to care where you go, it is Rusutsu.

 

I am quite conservative when I go off-piste, because I do not want to die. But skiing/snowboarding off-piste to me is very similar to surfing (I have been surfing for nearly 25 years now). You have to be careful and appreciate that things can go wrong very quickly.

 

I snowboard a lot by myself, so basically the one thing I keep in mind is, "where do I come out?" If I cannot see a clear way back to the resort or piste I do not go off-piste. This has kept me out of trouble over the last nine years. Zao is the only place I have genuinely done slack country, (Rusutsu does not count) but that was with a guy who has been skiing Zao since the sixties, so I felt safe.

 

I think that as long as people emphasise how dangerous going off-piste is I do not have a problem with threads like this.

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No idea on Rusutsu im afraid, but i can bring some digested information from another site talking about nozawa.

 

Theres a name for that area im always talking about. I wont mention it :) But heres a few things that i learned about that one area:

- i was pretty lucky the way i went. Had i hgave ridden down the resort line instead of a little perpendicular to it, i would have ended up at a bunch of cliffs. I know exactly what theyre talking about because you can see the drops while youre riding down that line and can easily theorise that if youd have just popped across towards the area you want to ride in, you may be having to fall about twenty meters to reach it. :) Not safe. At all. Not even mentioning the oft mentioned avi risk.

- speaking of. Someone mentioned FOUR slides on just one run of it. Two were small, but buried their ski partners up to the waist. One had no elaboration, and the final one was apparently terrifyingly large but didnt come onto their line.

- In contrast to the first point about riding too close to the resort line, theres the counterpoint of a dude talking about how he went too far skiers left and ended up completely lost. EVEN THOUGH hed done it hundreds of times.

 

Its given me a much stronger fear of that place than i already carried with me to be honest. And i carried a very strong fear of it that it was utterly out of my depth when i initially rode it. Its a great line, but holy shit you need to treat it like genuine back country stuff here. Its not the kind of place you should be popping under the ropes for a sly bit of powder and a play in the trees.

 

What else did i pick up?

- Wrong turns off the other side near paradise leading to lost skiers/boarders.

- Under no account ever ever ever think theres a line from yamabiko down to nagasaka between the skyline and ushikubi (i think its there, but it could be ushikubi and schneider) other than the official resort. He didnt specify but the statement was about a freind who also knew the resort pretty well and figured hed spied a solid line letting him ride from yamabiko down. Apparently full rescue once he hit an area with cliffs and couldnt make his way out of. He was obviously billed for it :) Might even be on site for all i know and can tell us all about it. Theres a link to his tale, but alas it was broken. Would love to hear it though.

 

So theres my part for nozawa BC. Play in the trees on yamabiko for a bit of slackcountry shenanigans (but also remember that theres signs telling you youre still liable for costs of rescue - its still not part of the piste - it just looks like theyre more tolerant of people riding it).

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Can somebody tell me how dangerous Rusutsu is behind the ropes?

 

bout the worst thing that could happen to you at rusutsu is having to posthole out of a flat bit or creek bed, nothing that won't put a few hairs on your chest!

 

The reward could be this - (rusutsu last year)

 

6776679292_e8000e41e3_o.jpg

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Found a cute little report of all the incidents from french avalanche association for 2008-2009 year (a full year - october to end of september).

 

Curiously the numbers seem to not match up and also some injuries are clearly listed as deaths in the articles linked (well, one certainly is - the 400m drop where the article lists him as dead, but the report lists him as injured).

 

Anyways... data data...

 

Total fatalities is listed at the bottom of the page as 34, But in the actual data its 38 for skier and snowboarder alone (with 5 more snowshoers and 2 climbers).

 

Of that 38, 29 were due to avalanches and 9 were falls.

 

There were 54 injuries (again discluding walking, snowshoeing and climbing), with 30 involving avalanches and 24 involving falls.

 

 

Of the fatalities, 1 was listed as "between pistes". Not sure what they are stating here in truth, off piste is off piste. So although im tempted to list it as off piste i wont.

 

Instead, there were 17 listed as off piste, 1 between pistes and 20 involving touring.

Touring obviously includes organised treks into backcountry AND essential maintenance work carried out by the "French Elecricity Generator (EDF)". Off piste obvioulsy refers more to rope ducking and lift accessed slackcountry (whether involving a wee hike on top of it).

 

Of the 17 slackcountry deaths, 11 were slide related and 6 were from falls.

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A well written article here from John Clary Davies and published in Powder Magazine a couple of days ago:-

 

 

“Sidecountry” is Dead

 

Why the word is dangerous

 

 

A couple weeks ago, I stepped out of my skis, flipped my boots to walk mode, and hiked ten minutes to the top of Flower Point, near Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana. Between when my party got to the top and when we skied to the Canyon Creek drainage below, we saw about 15 skiers. All but a couple skied without backpacks, and thus, backcountry safety equipment.

 

This isn’t unique. Go to Rock Springs at Jackson Hole, Rocky Point near Alta, or any backcountry run you can see from the lifts, and you’ll see skiers venturing beyond the controlled area of the ski resort without proper safety equipment (a good indicator they lack proper education, too). About ten years ago, I did the exact same thing at Flower Point. Ignorantly, I even skied the area by myself. I was so close to the ski area. What could go wrong?

 

Whether you are prepared or not, we tend to downplay the danger of lift-accessed backcountry. You can see it from the lifts. If something does go wrong, help is so close. It feels safer. Perhaps the skier just intends to duck the rope for a couple of turns. Or maybe, like me a decade ago, they just don’t know any better.

 

But backcountry skiing close to the resort is just as dangerous as backcountry skiing anywhere else, which is why we need to kill the word sidecountry. The word perpetuates the myth that it’s not as dangerous as a place you had to skin to, and no, it won’t keep unprepared skiers from ducking ropes, but emphasizing the seriousness of that action might help. So strike it from your vocabulary. Call it lift-accessed backcountry. Call it backcountry. Add the fact that in the sidecountry, you’re more likely to have inexperienced skiers without proper gear skiing on top of you, like at Canyon Creek, and the lift-accessed backcountry is actually probably more dangerous.

 

Though ski patrol may be close, they are often ill-equipped for backcountry rescue, and not obligated to respond to an incident outside of their boundaries. Elyse Saugstad, who survived the Tunnel Creek avalanche near Stevens Pass last winter, said somebody within their party called 911 within minutes of the avalanche, and Stevens Pass Ski Patrol didn’t arrive until one hour later. While it ultimately did not make a difference, she says they were lucky to have help arrive that quickly.

 

Ski brands, ski areas, and ski magazines like POWDER, are culpable for promoting the sidecountry, and more specifically, the easy access to fresh white just beyond the rope boundaries. But it’s time to move on. The word sidecountry is dead. Instead of perpetuating the myth that because a zone is lift-accessed it’s safer, or any different, than the backcountry, we should change the language and messages we use in an effort to educate those seeking to travel beyond the ropes.

 

“As we as an industry keep promoting the untouched fluffy stuff, we need to try harder at making the point that there is a responsibility that comes with searching for the untracked goods,” says Saugstad. “We don’t want to be like a TV show, glamorizing the fact that we are indicating how easy it truly is to access backcountry terrain by glossing over the fact that it comes with the behind the scenes price of getting the proper education and gear if you really want to do it.”

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I think language is great. And i appreciate the sentiment, But thats all it is. It doesnt deal with the issue, which is RIGHT THERE at the bottom of the text in the very first line of the last paragraph...

 

It also completely fails to recognise where the term came from in the first place and WHY. Now even if you werent there in its growth, its fairly evident that the sound of the expression mimics the much more legitimate term "back country". Its a play on the expression. Its clearly not a positive expression. Slack country is a rather dismissive term. Its not something that people would have chosen for self definition. Its a term that suggests that one is too lazy to do it properly. So that being the case, the question can reasonably be asked, whence the term?

 

And just like any term of derision, its been co-opted as a legitimate form of self definition. And more importantly, its been turned into a functional category for marketing and selling ever more new things most of us dont really need. People now see slackcountry as a gateway to back country riding (or even more interesting - see it as the end point of piste riding). And lo, like moses, to save us from ourselves, the holy brotherhood of backcountry riders come down from sainai to reveal that its just a trick of language: that if only we used another more grown up term to talk about off piste riding, that we'd all stop doing it so casually.

 

I appreciate the sentiment, but its ****ing stupid and lacks a grown up encounter with "slackcountry" riding. Its like the whole PC march of the 80s where you might write in herstory as an act of linguistic subversion. It functions to DRAW ATTENTION to the gender bias in history and the discussion of history and its canon, but it does nothing to fix the actual problem of gender bias in history. This functions in a similar manner. It helps draw attention to the dangers of off piste riding, but it sidelines the promotion of side country/backcountry riding in not only the clips that are chosen, but also in the gear thats for sale and the design of the gear DELIBERATELY targeting backcountry riding like its a stage in your snowboarding progression rather than a choice you should be reasonably making for yourself about your personal interests and skill level.

 

Then theres the resorts that have wishy washy policies on sidecountry riding, who dont do anything to educate their skiing population about the dangers of riding off piste except sticking up a sign and a small rope somewhere saying "you do this at your own risk". Resorts need to take FULL and complete responsibility for the access to those areas. This could be done with increased patrols, or putting up larger fences in key drop in points. (I know for a fact that im not going off piste on muju when i see seven foot high orange mesh fences at every damn turn). Or they could, i dunno, patrol the area, run avalanche safety checks and close the gates on it when they find the conditions too unsafe (a la every gate system). They could just you know, take responsibility for their mountain. They know the mountain. They know all the key drop in and exit points. Why is this so hard? "because they shouldnt be riding there in the first place!" I might hear you yell...

 

But its clear they are. This is an issue that requires facing the reality of it and not some kind of idealised fantasy and how people think it should be. If you want people to stop ducking ropes, lock off the zones. Patrol them routinely. Pull passes. Cover exit and entrance points. Tangram do that. Pretty well i might add. Their patrol just wander about standing at key exit points grabbing people coming out the trees and kicking them off the resort. Makes it a bit of a disincentive to ride it regardless of your own self evaluation on its "safety".

 

If on the other hand you dont really care, then set up an information system, or better yet a gate system on it. Set up classes for visitors to educate them about YOUR SPECIFIC MOUNTAIN and the dangers people will encounter riding in SPECIFIC PARTS of YOUR SPECIFIC MOUNTAIN so they can at least avoid those specific dangers and ride those parts with more information and not less. Or if thats a bit laissez faire, why not run something like at Niseko for the avalanche control area with guided groups. Its not like theres an all or nothing here... you can go in all kinds of directions and make all kinds of compromises. This doesnt need to be either flashing lights and neon signs versus complete and total silence.

 

Its fairly evident someone is going to be killed within the next year or so in nozawa. I dunno if people are just sitting on their hands waiting on it so they can just say "see! told you so! Lets lock this shit down!" or whether they genuinely havent an idea on how to look after it. But the facts are its growing in popularity and its extraordinarily dangerous. Its just a matter of time.

The way to deal with this issue is to talk about it and pass on as much information as possible like a grown up. The way to not deal with it is to say, "well if we just redefine what the words mean, or stop using terms that we as an industry spend a fortune promoting and marketing as a casual version of REAL and AUTHENTIC snowboarding, then people will stop doing it".

 

Its a nice sentiment, i can get behind it as a step. But its not the issue, it simply helps to ILLUSTRATE the issue. But we still have to talk about that issue and offer real and practical solutions to it.

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