Corn and consequence, June musings

It's one of those June weekends we dream about, probably not the only one like it this year, but a good one. The high-ish freezing levels will begin to draw people to steeper shady routes on the volcanoes, even if it's barely warm enough.

NFNWR in particular prompts this note. In 2008, I remember camping at its base and seeing few or zero tracks. In 2015, I lost count of the number of skiers, but perhaps twenty. While ski gear improvements and trip reports have made it possible for more people to consider the route, the consequences haven't changed. It's not a question of whether, but when, someone lands in the schrund.
                                                                               
With last year's drought, 2016 sees twice as many new skiers exploring the boundaries of their experience. With the growth in the sport, that number is compounded. Risk is a numbers game; the number of people playing the game has increased.
                                                                               
The steeper lines are not without risk. Some are steep enough that a fall might not be arrested, and others change from corn to boilerplate with a small change in slope angle or solar aspect. It's the improbability of the act of skiing steep routes that draws some to ski them, but that improbability has basis in fact.
                                                                               
Furthermore, a skier's sluff (or a sliding skier) on these faces can travel half a vertical mile. Coordinating with other skiers may be essential -- a small nudge can cause someone else to lose an edge.
                                                                               
So, look well to each turn, accurately understand the risk , and leave healthy margins for error. I want to see your winter trip reports and blissful corn turns for decades to come. The Southwest Chutes are darn fun, too.

Good reminders, Charlie. We skied an east-facing aspect in the While Pass BC area a few weeks ago and looking back up from the bottom (okay, admiring our turns), it was sobering to see how much sluff we generated and how far it traveled.

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Really good reminder for this weekend - thank you.

Very good points, Charlie. I will never forget skiing the Northeast Face of Mt. Lassen as our "easy day" on a trip down to Shasta years ago. We were lax in starting due to having skied Shasta from Clear Creek the day before. The upper slopes were fully cooked by the time we got on top. Despite Amar's report of 45 degrees, which is accurate for the majority of the upper face, we got out an inclinometer on the very steepest part of the skiing face and measured 58 degrees. We had to make a very scary ski cut across the top of the entire face and watch the molten sluff run the whole length of the face, reaching more than 5 feet deep by the bottom. Too easy to get to a dicey situation before you fully appreciate it. The reason more people die on Mount Washington, NH than any other mountain in the US is simply a matter of ease of access for large numbers of people to very big terrain.

The Southwest Chutes are darn fun, too.

Even the chutes can be spicy in the right (wrong?) conditions.

For some of us the companions are even more fun than the ski route!