With nine deaths from avalanches in ten days, Idaho and our surrounding states were making national news as being the deadliest season in sixteen years. This weekend above all had the strongest warning from the N.W. Avalanche Center. We knew the snow pack was unstable, so we planned to be extra cautions as we ventured out alone above Soldier Mountain Ski Area.
On a good day, we would have rode the chair lift to the top of the ski area, crossed to the ridge and followed that up to the summit of Peak 2. But our main goal was to stay alive, and for me, to test out my new back country skis, so we opted to start trekking from the parking lot and turn around as soon as things started looking a little dicey.
I’d been wanting to get into alpine touring for years, but just couldn’t find boots large enough to fit my size 15 feet. This year, that changed when I found my Scarpas. One day on demo skis and I was hooked and I ordered my own gear. This was my first outing.
On our way through the ski area, we were stopped by a ski patrol who wanted to know all about our plans. She tried to scare us out of going out of bounds and said we’d need to stop and check in with the ski patrol at the top of the second chair.
Just as we reached the ski patrols shack, the wind kicked up and we thought we were in for a real winter experience, but played it cool while five ski patrols grilled us on our readiness and knowledge of the snow conditions. Do you have avalanche beacons? Shovels? Wands? What’s your emergency contacts, bla bla. I pretty much kept my mouth shut while Frank answered the questions. He was careful not to say any untruths, but didn’t go out of his way to tell them everything either. Like when they asked if he had a transceiver, he simply said yes. Didn’t mention that I didn’t have one, or that his batteries needed replacing. Like I said, we planned from the beginning to stay out of trouble areas so we didn’t feel the need to justify our lack of gear to them.
After leaving the hut, we skied off into the back country abyss. I have to admit that it was a little eerie. The wind had settled and the only sound was the clicking of our climbing risers setting down against our skis with every stride, and ski skins sliding through the powder. At one point I took a quick pit-stop and thought I heard the whomp of settling snow just off to my side. Funny how on any other day I wouldn’t think twice about traveling on this snow pack, but after hearing all the hype about the (very real) danger, the slopes begin to take on a persona of their own. A character in your day’s story. One that holds it’s own secret plans. Are you my friend, or my nemesis, just waiting to pounce? Despite our caution, will we end up being the season’s next victims?
The slope began to steepen, but we continued up until we began to see chunks of snow that had fallen from above. We decided that this would be our high point, but were curious about the actual conditions below the surface so we took a few minutes to dig a snow pit to see for ourselves.
We dug out a wall that went about six feet down to the grass and eight feet across. Then made a side cut going up slope on each end of the wall, isolating the block on three sides. The snow was actually quite monolithic almost all the way down, but it had a one-foot layer right at the bottom that was so light and fluffy it didn’t even seem like snow. More like tiny beads of Styrofoam. Really didn’t expect to see that so deep.
To test the avalanche danger, I climbed up on top of the block, with my ski ends close to the tops of the side cuts. Two small hops was all it took and the whole block slid off in one big chunk from that bottom fluff layer. A couple more jumps and the block split in two on another thin layer also near the bottom.
We were satisfied that we’d made a good decision to turn back, and headed back to the ski area. We checked in with the ski patrols and they were very interested in hearing about our snow pit test and forwarded our report to the Sawtooth Avalanche Center.
We didn’t get to any kind of summit, but it was a fun and educational day. My new gear worked well, I just need to make some adjustments to my upper boot/sock arrangement to avoid some bruising and rubbing.