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We all know about the crap conditions we were all bitching about last week........it seemed the dumping that we received on the Thurs and Friday night in northern Tohoku made for prime conditions for NADARE (avalanche) ..... skiing a ridge within the gondola area of Hakkoda I dropped down a beautiful uncut slope of about 45 degrees.... down onto the gut of Mokozawa (the main 'backcountry' run within the gondola area)..... it was about high noon and the snow was heating up sightly. BIG MISTAKE.....a boarder friend cut hard at the top of the slope and the whole thing released in a slab slide. Thank god the slope was not that long and blew out into the gut of the run. The slab was about 15m across 30cm deep and about 20m long. Hit me FAST........couldn't believe just how fast. I rode it for the first 5m but just tried swimming for the top. Ended up down about 20m and headup buried as if in a major hipcheck went wrong.

 

Wondering if anyone else has had any other instances such as these (at Hakkoda or otherwise)..... in nadare prone areas....and where to stay away from.

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Originally posted by hutch:
..... skiing a ridge within the gondola area of Hakkoda I dropped down a beautiful uncut slope of about 45 degrees....

Wondering if anyone else has had any other instances such as these (at Hakkoda or otherwise)..... in nadare prone areas....and where to stay away from.



Well, stay away from 45 degree slopes for a start. Did you pit the slope first? Have a spotter? Cut the slope? Transceiver?
*Anything?!*


If you want to learn how to be comprehensibly safe then do a *recognised* avalance course, which means outside of Japan.

And follow what you're taught: simply dropping onto a 45 degree slope that's had decent sun exposure after a dump without checking it first is tantamount to suicide IMHO.

Places in Canada, Australia and New Zealand all do good courses to international standards, at better prices than you'll find in the US or (most of) Europe.

Mr. Bob!
YMMV
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Yep...

I did cut the slope

and I did have two spotters

 

pretty confident about taking the slope as it's a in bounds powder course that I've run countless times.....plus no trees to run out.

Think I was damn lucky that it was my first slab slide experience.

 

Am going to take the CAA rec 1 level course.

There are a few guys that run this CAA RECOGNIZED course within Japan. One being Dave Enright. Just gotta get to Nagano or Hokkaido to do it

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hutch...

 

if it is an in-bounds powder run,

shouldn't patrol be doing some sort

of avalanche control (blasting...)??

 

or is this just another one of my delusional

views on how a ski-resort should be run...

 

danz

 

------------------

pray for snow

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delusional I'm afraid.

 

Hakkoda is unique .....particularly to Japan

 

I'll be writing a feature on the gondola area of Hakkoda in February. Full details then.

 

The patrol (numbering bout 20) are primarily there to bail people out when they get hurt or to go looking for people in the backcountry. This is a blessing truly.....no music, no crowds, no courses, no ticket loss for ducking what few ropes exist.....just your ass if you loose the orange poles on the two routes down the mt.

 

No blasting really necessary.....that small slope I was on is the only nadare susceptible slope really 'in bounds' and by in bounds I mean between the routes (not courses) that run down the ridges to either side.

(working on getting a map of Hakkoda on the SJG site as we speak)

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No but I watched my friend cut a rollover and cause a slide that half buried his best bud. I think the key mistake we make no matter how safe we think it is is almost always the same. We just get too dammed excited, your buddy should have waited until you were in the safe zone. I always tell my friends to do things like this but they always rush in big mistake. reflecking on this you werein bounds and thus the rat race.

Take care play safe wear and bring the gear.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by hutch:
delusional I'm afraid.

No blasting really necessary.....that small slope I was on is the only nadare susceptible slope really 'in bounds' and by in bounds I mean between the routes (not courses) that run down the ridges to either side.
(working on getting a map of Hakkoda on the SJG site as we speak)


If they had a slide inbounds and it was big enough to injure (let's just say anything over L1) then they weren't doing their job. EOFS if they're professionals.

Which is the point really: Japanese patrollers *aren't* professionals. Some of them *are* very good, but those are few and far between and they all work with two big handicaps: They're not *allowed* (by law) to do what it might take to save you if you really need it and they don't need *any* qualifications to work as patrollers and so a lot of them don't have any quals.

On a field the size of Hakoda (small) and the number of patrollers you say they have there should be no chance of that sort of thing happening. Let me ask a simple question: Do the patrol at Hakoda have and use transceivers?

You cut the slope, it's small and it still let go? Someone dropped in when another person was on the slope? It'd 'been safe countless other times'? Well done on having the spotters, but did they have avi equipment for a rescue (which, obviously, they might well have needed)? Did you? Why'd the spotters let someone drop in like that?

I'm reminded of the two moron kiwis who died in Hakuba by being stoopid. It's no good 'planning on doing an avi course sometime soon' if you're going to go skiing that sort of terrain.

Yes, I'm grumpy about this. It *really* makes me angry. I gave up patrolling because I got sick of fishing morons out of situations they wouldn't have got into if they had any sort of clue, all because they thought being a reasonable boarder somehow meant they "knew what they were doing in mountains".

Mr. Bob!
YMMV
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