Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Info, conditions and gear related to skiing or riding Colorado Peaks, including the 14ers!
Forum rules
  • This is a mountaineering forum, so please keep your posts on-topic. Posts do not all have to be related to the 14ers but should at least be mountaineering-related.
  • Personal attacks and confrontational behavior will result in removal from the forum at the discretion of the administrators.
  • Do not use this forum to advertise, sell photos or other products or promote a commercial website.
  • Posts will be removed at the discretion of the site administrator or moderator(s), including: Troll posts, posts pushing political views or religious beliefs, and posts with the purpose of instigating conflict within the forum.
For more details, please see the Terms of Use you agreed to when joining the forum.
User avatar
oldschoolczar
Posts: 597
Joined: 7/18/2011
14ers: 45  1  1 
13ers: 7
Trip Reports (0)
 

Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by oldschoolczar »

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-mexico ... ew-mexico/

Sad news..

There've been a couple other inbounds avalanches this year I've heard about. I might start wearing my beacon inbounds when conditions warrant. Heading to Aspen this weekend and packed my avalanche gear for Highlands bowl...
“what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire” -Charles Bukowski
User avatar
polar
Posts: 1250
Joined: 8/12/2013
14ers: 2 
Trip Reports (1)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by polar »

oldschoolczar wrote: There've been a couple other inbounds avalanches this year I've heard about. I might start wearing my beacon inbounds when conditions warrant. Heading to Aspen this weekend and packed my avalanche gear for Highlands bowl...
This brings up a question: since inbound avalanches are really rare, is there a standard protocol for search and rescue after an inbound avalanche? Because most people don't wear a beacon while inbound, but a lot of the newer skiing/snowboarding clothing has RECCO technology built in. So if the standard protocol used by ski resorts is to use RECCO first instead of doing beacon search based on the assumption that people are more likely to have something with RECCO on, then I may need to go and buy myself some new snowboarding clothes. Anyone worked/works in a ski resort that can answer this?
"Getting to the bottom, OPTIONAL. Getting to the top, MANDATORY!" - The Wisest Trail Sign
User avatar
Vincopotamus
Posts: 348
Joined: 12/4/2008
14ers: 36  3  3 
13ers: 10 1
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by Vincopotamus »

I was at Loveland on Friday and spotted a fresh avalanche just barely out of bounds from Chair 1, and there were a handful of patrollers and public digging through debris. I skied over and asked if they could use another set of hands and they did. Apparently a witness saw a couple skiers ski through the out of bound area, but didn’t witness the actual avalanche so he wasn’t sure if anyone was caught by it.

I don’t know what their actual protocol was or how formal it is, but ski patrol utilized beacon searches, a recco scanner, probe lines and an avalanche dog to check the debris several times.

This was a fairly small debris field, maybe 50x100’ so it was relatively easy to cover the whole area quickly with the scans/searches. I’d think a recco scan might be better to start with than a usual beacon for a larger inbounds slides since inbounds skiers are probably more likely to have recco reflectors than a beacon. But I am not an expert by any stretch.
The only time I lower the bar is après
User avatar
polar
Posts: 1250
Joined: 8/12/2013
14ers: 2 
Trip Reports (1)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by polar »

Vincopotamus wrote:I don’t know what their actual protocol was or how formal it is, but ski patrol utilized beacon searches, a recco scanner, probe lines and an avalanche dog to check the debris several times.
Thanks for the observation. It makes sense that the resort would use all available resources to have the best chance of finding a buried person. Luckily I found some inexpensive options so I can have both!

Marmot RECCO belt, $40
Pieps backup transmitter, on sale for $43

Together, less than the typical price of one piece of RECCO jacket or pants. I have a Pieps transceiver, but a little overkill to wear it inbounds (unless I plan to help with a search). The Pieps backup transmitter seems perfect for inbound use, and I can give it to my kids when they're old enough to ski/snowboard.
"Getting to the bottom, OPTIONAL. Getting to the top, MANDATORY!" - The Wisest Trail Sign
User avatar
davebobk47
Posts: 877
Joined: 6/13/2005
14ers: 58  3 
13ers: 131 1 4
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by davebobk47 »

Talking to a patroller once he said that RECCO is for recovery and typically more of a last resort or used after the fact if beacon/dog search was unsuccessful. I do sometimes wear a beacon in bounds depending on my plans for the day and the conditions.
"Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve. They are the cathedrals where I practice my religion." -Anatoli Boukreev
User avatar
oldschoolczar
Posts: 597
Joined: 7/18/2011
14ers: 45  1  1 
13ers: 7
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by oldschoolczar »

polar wrote: This brings up a question: since inbound avalanches are really rare, is there a standard protocol for search and rescue after an inbound avalanche? Because most people don't wear a beacon while inbound, but a lot of the newer skiing/snowboarding clothing has RECCO technology built in. So if the standard protocol used by ski resorts is to use RECCO first instead of doing beacon search based on the assumption that people are more likely to have something with RECCO on, then I may need to go and buy myself some new snowboarding clothes. Anyone worked/works in a ski resort that can answer this?
That's a very good point. I thought about this and figured wearing my beacon was just kind of a "why not" scenario. It was my overabundance of caution.. unlikely to help in the event of a slide, but required minimal effort to wear it. I guess I hoped other skiers might have beacons, but at least my wife/partner would have hers. But I ended up not wearing it anyway.

I always assumed RECCO was the go-to for ski patrol when searching an inbounds avalanche since most people don't wear beacons, but I think I'm wrong. There's some interesting discussion on the topic here:

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/sho ... -vs-Beacon

Also, here's a link to news on another inbounds avalanche at Jackson Hole in December:

https://www.tetongravity.com/story/news ... ckson-hole

It's amazing to me that there actually aren't more inbounds slides considering much of the terrain at ski resorts is right in that sweet spot to slide! Props to ski patrol keeping us safe!
“what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire” -Charles Bukowski
pvnisher
Posts: 1747
Joined: 9/28/2006
Trip Reports (8)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by pvnisher »

Curious about the backup transmitter.
So if you didn't have your main beacon on, and were stopped, then it would immediately start transmitting.
It only has transmit battery for an hour, but as long as you're moving it should be dormant.
Haven't seen many (ok, any) of those before.
User avatar
Conor
Posts: 1108
Joined: 9/2/2014
14ers: 41  6  6 
13ers: 51 1 1
Trip Reports (7)
 

Re: Inbounds avalanche kills skier at Taos

Post by Conor »

oldschoolczar wrote:
polar wrote: This brings up a question: since inbound avalanches are really rare, is there a standard protocol for search and rescue after an inbound avalanche? Because most people don't wear a beacon while inbound, but a lot of the newer skiing/snowboarding clothing has RECCO technology built in. So if the standard protocol used by ski resorts is to use RECCO first instead of doing beacon search based on the assumption that people are more likely to have something with RECCO on, then I may need to go and buy myself some new snowboarding clothes. Anyone worked/works in a ski resort that can answer this?
That's a very good point. I thought about this and figured wearing my beacon was just kind of a "why not" scenario. It was my overabundance of caution.. unlikely to help in the event of a slide, but required minimal effort to wear it. I guess I hoped other skiers might have beacons, but at least my wife/partner would have hers. But I ended up not wearing it anyway.

I always assumed RECCO was the go-to for ski patrol when searching an inbounds avalanche since most people don't wear beacons, but I think I'm wrong. There's some interesting discussion on the topic here:

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/sho ... -vs-Beacon

Also, here's a link to news on another inbounds avalanche at Jackson Hole in December:

https://www.tetongravity.com/story/news ... ckson-hole

It's amazing to me that there actually aren't more inbounds slides considering much of the terrain at ski resorts is right in that sweet spot to slide! Props to ski patrol keeping us safe!
Without getting too far into the weeds in this thread, the reason slides are rare at resorts in the "sweet spot" is bc the weak layers get compacted before they can even form by people skiing over them. Like at Irwin, the guides go out and sidestep slopes that have been known to slide early in the season. The inbounds slides typically happen in "expert" terrain that it isn't skied as often as the rest of the runs. The examples given here all occured in "chutes."