Zermatt, Switz., Feb. 9, 2014

[Admin]

May I suggest an Avalanche Level I course while you're here next month?
http://utahavalanchecenter.org/provider/level-1-3
If Tyson is teaching that course (and I presume that he is) you'll learn a ton. I'll even go so far as to take it with you, for reinforcement is a good thing. How serious are you about acquiring some mountain awareness? The ball's in your court.

Well, you've started or replied to a good dozen other topics since I first posted that, yet your hubris has allowed you to completely ignore multiple instances of that quote. That's most unfortunate.

As you have no desire to become better informed about your own safety and that of your ski companions (yours truly included), I no longer have any desire to lead you anywhere outside of a ski area boundary. It's that simple.

I understand your feelings. I'm looking at this from the other side of things. Personally I wouldn't do anything outside the boundary without either a licensed guide or until I gain the knowledge to be able to understand the decisions that are being made and deciding on my own if I'm OK with where we are going.

I'm sure you don't recall but one day I was with your crew and you and a few others were headed out of Alta on a Low avalanche danger day. I declined, just not worth it

I have the utmost respect for the mountains and am generally not willing to just follow someone around when the risk of death is involved.

Frankly I think that were precisely on the same side of things. I'm in agreement with you 100%.

 

[socal]

May I suggest an Avalanche Level I course while you're here next month?
http://utahavalanchecenter.org/provider/level-1-3
If Tyson is teaching that course (and I presume that he is) you'll learn a ton. I'll even go so far as to take it with you, for reinforcement is a good thing. How serious are you about acquiring some mountain awareness? The ball's in your court.

Well, you've started or replied to a good dozen other topics since I first posted that, yet your hubris has allowed you to completely ignore multiple instances of that quote. That's most unfortunate.

As you have no desire to become better informed about your own safety and that of your ski companions (yours truly included), I no longer have any desire to lead you anywhere outside of a ski area boundary. It's that simple.

I understand your feelings. I'm looking at this from the other side of things. Personally I wouldn't do anything outside the boundary without either a licensed guide or until I gain the knowledge to be able to understand the decisions that are being made and deciding on my own if I'm OK with where we are going.

I'm sure you don't recall but one day I was with your crew and you and a few others were headed out of Alta on a Low avalanche danger day. I declined, just not worth it

I have the utmost respect for the mountains and am generally not willing to just follow someone around when the risk of death is involved.

Frankly I think that were precisely on the same side of things. I'm in agreement with you 100%.

Didn't mean other side of thinking, meant on the other side of the story. Meaning I'm the guy following not the guy being followed.

Either way I have no doubt we are generally in agreement.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

[coldsmoke]

I do not live in Utah, so am unlikely to give up LCC ski time when I'm there in winter.

That's perhaps the most ignorant thing I've ever seen you post. Your priorities are jacked up. You want to ski untracked up to 50 days per year, often out of bounds at locations all around the world all season long (and burn through a boatload of cash in doing so), but you're unwilling to sacrifice two lift served days in exchange for two backcountry ski days in order to become better informed about mountain safety? Are you serious?

It's far from obvious to me in the Euro environment how to improve those decisions

Nope, never mind - you just topped it. You really don't get it, do you? I've just handed you on a silver platter how to make better informed decisions, yet you can't figure out how you'd do that?

I no longer have any desire to lead you anywhere outside of a ski area boundary.

Then your groups are going to be smaller, since some of your Utah local friends don't even own avy gear. I keep mine in the car, so was able to use it for that 2011 Alta closing day run in Devils' Castle for example.

You apparently completely missed my point that avalanche gear is utterly useless without a head to avoid having to use it. Frankly, I don't give a [censored] whether or not you're wearing a beacon if you're going to unwittingly trigger a slide that's going to bury me.

I give up. You're hopeless.

It is rather astonishing that someone can discuss endlessly the minutiae of when and where folks ski or even how they use their vacation time and then have an almost complete disregard for the most serious risk in this sport.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I have been guided skiing in the backcountry over 100 days and am thus quite familiar with guide directions and the reasons for them, as illustrated in the Mustang example above. Thus it's unreasonable for admin to say

I don't give a [censored] whether or not you're wearing a beacon if you're going to unwittingly trigger a slide that's going to bury me.

,
implying that I'm more likely to bury him than his numerous other local and visiting ski partners with less guided experience.

have an almost complete disregard for the most serious risk in this sport.

Yes, that's why my first vacation trip after I retired was to the 5-day International Snow Science Workshop in Squaw Valley in October of 2010. Is this a substitute for a field course? No, but again it's more avalanche education than the vast majority of admin's ski partners have.

It is rather astonishing that someone can discuss endlessly the minutiae of when and where folks ski or even how they use their vacation time

This is the most insightful comment of yesterday's posts. After dispensing this advice over the years, some appreciated and some not, I'm an easy target for a topic where I'm less well informed.

 

[Marc_C]

This sort of instruction is common on guided trips, and similar to what we did on Middle Finger at Snowbasin on Feb. 2. As Tseeb noted, that was a potentially sketchy area that we were forced to ski because we were too low to get over the rocks to the safer area skier's left which we navigated to on the second run after lunch. With a larger group on Patsy Marley and my usual straggling on tedious Alta traverses I may not have heard one-at-a-time instructions there on occasion.

That's the entire point of this discussion and Admin beating on you - to get out of that "my life is in your hands" guided mentality. The huge problem is that bolded part above - on PM the areas that should be skied on at a time are very obvious - this is a basic avi skill that should not require a "guide" telling you one-at-a-time instructions.

Regarding the Snowbasin side country day (some discussion of which is in this thread):
1) +1 to tseeb's post
2) Based on the pics, the descriptions and discussions, the snowpack this season, recent conditions, and the avi advisory, I personally would not have gone back there that day without the entire party beeping and having recovery gear.

[Should this whole side discussion on avi considerations be split out into its own thread?]

 

[Tony Crocker]

It would have been quite understandable if admin had required all of us to have avy gear at Snowbasin as at Devil's Castle 3 years ago.

Good point on Patsy Marley. It's become "part of the Alta routine" so easy to take less seriously than something like No Name.

I've thought the avi discussion should be split out for some time. However I also thought it might be viewed as a "conflict of interest" if I were the person making the split. Admin?

 

[Marc_C]

It would have been quite understandable if admin had required all of us to have avy gear at Snowbasin as at Devil's Castle 3 years ago.

And that was spring, implying wet avalanches, which are far less survivable (they set up like concrete almost immediately after they stop; digging out a victim is extremely difficult)

Good point on Patsy Marley. It's become "part of the Alta routine" so easy to take less seriously than something like No Name.

Complacency - exactly how so many get the chop. I see that attitude in many of our local crew.

 

[Admin]

That's the entire point of this discussion and Admin beating on you - to get out of that "my life is in your hands" guided mentality. The huge problem is that bolded part above - on PM the areas that should be skied on at a time are very obvious - this is a basic avi skill that should not require a "guide" telling you one-at-a-time instructions.

This bears repeating because it's the whole crux of this entire discussion. I'm not your guide. For starters, I'm anything but qualified. I'm someone who's skiing with you and happens to choose to ski a particular terrain. You choose to come along but you have to be capable of making your own decisions because I'm not making them for you. Whether you bring gear, whether you back away, etc. is your decision but it has to be an informed one because I'm not your mommy. When your decisions (or lack of decision making skills) become a threat to my personal safety, I'm no longer willing to allow you to follow, especially when you have a demonstrated adversity to acquiring that knowledge yourself. That just plain shocks me and I've even brought that horse to water, but he just won't drink. Not my problem anymore.

How many guides you've hired, how many beacons you own, etc., has no impact upon that decision making ability, as you've demonstrated yourself numerous times.

As for tseeb's post on Snowbasin, I meant to reply but forgot to. I'll do that shortly, but before he posted that we had a very productive backchannel discussion. While he raises some excellent points, there are some very key issues that I respectfully disagree with that in my opinion significantly change the dynamic that was involved that day.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

When your decisions (or lack of decision making skills) become a threat to my personal safety, I'm no longer willing to allow you to follow, especially when you have a demonstrated adversity to acquiring that knowledge yourself. That just plain shocks me and I've even brought that horse to water, but he just won't drink. Not my problem anymore.

Were you two able to resolve your differences in person at GMD like big boys? :-D

 

[Admin]

Of course not. The needling continued in person.