I was recently on a search mission for an overdue female hiker. She had been out for three nights after the weather came in on Saturday dumping about 2 to 2.5 feet of snow. We had several teams in the field and the team I was on was assigned to hike up and over a pass then hike up a drainage to a lake and then loop back to base.
We had four in our group and we hiked up to the pass. Along the way we put on snow shoes since the snow was up to our thighs in several places. We noticed lots of wind blown snow and several bare spots where the wind had blown the snow off the ridge. As we gained the ridge and made it to the pass, we had quite breezy conditions and noticed several cornices had developed. Looking down the pass we could see a couple of spots where cornices had failed and slid down the open slope. We evaluated the conditions and were concerned for possible wind slab avalanche conditions as well as the cornices. We traversed the ridge looking for a better way to drop down into the valley floor, but we didn't find any good spots. We then returned back to the main trail and got reassigned.
On the drive home, I started wondering if we could have made it down the NE side of the pass. Sure the NE slopes are classic for wind slab, but perhaps if we had had a rope one of us (me) could have explored the slope to see what the conditions were like.
Fortunately, the weather broke enough to get a helicopter in the valley and they were able to spot the missing woman who had created a shelter under a poncho. Where they located her would have been close to our planned route, but not sure if it would have been within earshot of a voice check of not.
Anyway, I'm still thinking about that slope and wondering if we could have made it down. BTW, the other three team members didn't think it was safe either so I guess that makes me feel a bit better.
No comments:
Post a Comment