J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

ir12daveor wrote:Question for Ise.

Do you know what the regional Avalanche report was giving for Berner Oberland on Sunday. I know it was 3 on Saturday, and I seem to remember the National Danger card showing 3 for the majority of the main Alpine ridge for Snunday when I checked it on Saturday night. I only checked the regional bulletin for Graubunden on Sunday as thats where I was going. The reason I ask is that the media here is reporting that the risk for the Diemtigtal area was at level 2. This surprises me because I was under the impression that it was still 3 in Berner Oberland on Sunday.

I recall I saw a national hazard map with some areas north of the rhone at level 2 because I remember thinking it would have been way better for the snowshoeing I was going to do I saw those press reports today as well, and comment from SLF, that it was level 2. The bulletin from Sunday is still available :

http://www.slf.ch/lawineninfo/zusatzinfos/Archiv/lwdarchiv/2010/rbbob/de/pdf/20100103_rbbob_de_c.pdf

And Saturday :

http://www.slf.ch/lawineninfo/zusatzinfos/Archiv/lwdarchiv/2010/rbbob/de/pdf/20100102_rbbob_de_c.pdf

Stewart Dowling wrote:I am guessing that it must have dumped it down quite early this morning then for the area to be unsafe.
I am hoping that predicted cold temperatures arrive and remain to give it some stability on the mountain and allow the base to stiffen up.

That's not really how it works. Fresh snow is just one reason slopes can be unstable, I don't really understand you point about cold temperatures so I can't really comment.

If you want to know some more about snow I can recommend this book :

http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/727392/Snow/Product.html

it's very short and easy to read, you could probably read on your journey there and arrive to some real snow to observe it all in practice.

There's a companion volume which is also interesting :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avalanche-Understand-Avalanches-Cicerone-Mini-guides/dp/1852844736/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262620825&sr=1-8

If you're not venturing off-piste you'd get some ideas about what the various snow reports are really saying and if you going off-piste then it's obviously essential to have an accurate idea of what's going on under your feet.

Le Nouvelliste, the local paper, has an update now with a photo :

http://www.lenouvelliste.ch/fr/news/flash_info/bruson-victime-de-l-avalanche-identifiee-0-179077

Photo's can be deceiving but that doesn't look like a good slope, the slide's gone full depth in places and the crown wall looks a good couple of metres high. If it's 250m x 40m that mist be a photo of about the top one third of the slide

ir12daveor wrote:I was in Berner Oberland on Saturday and there had been quite a bit of new snow with a lot of wind loading on certain slopes. I saw a few groups making their way up some pretty heavily loaded slopes. Be careful out there if you go off piste. The avalanche risk is still considerable for most of the Swiss Alps.

Wind transport has been a factor on some slopes certainly but there's also a problem underneath is poorly consolidated layers, partly this has been due to the wild fluctuations in temperature that we're getting. It's been -20'c one day and then hovering around freezing the next. It's snowing heavily now and burying yet another poor layer that, judging by what we saw yesterday, will possibly leave a depth hoar in places.

Now the holiday visitors have gone home, and I've a few days free, we'd hoped for a few good ski days but it's not very appealing conditions. I'd be curious to know what the longest run of unfavorable conditions has been previously in SLF records, this has been going on for a while now but I guess it's irritating rather than record-breaking. The forecast seem to offer some hope we'll see a respite towards the end of the week but some of the buried layers will remain a concern I think. Ironically, really cover isn't great in places either.

Admin wrote:
Other sources indicate that the second tragedy was "near Verbier".

Local news mentioned a ski mountaineer near Verbier accompanied by a guide who was freed by the rescue team.

edit : they're now saying Bruson which is in the 4V area.

Gooseh wrote: You seem to assume everyone wearing a helmet is under the impression that it's likely to save their lives.

No i don't at all, I'm just observing that the contributions here reflect that misconception. I think, without any evidence, that it is a majority opinion but I've no way of confirming that.

Gooseh wrote:When the payoff is so great, though, why not wear one?

As it happens I do wear a helmet ) But that's just the lottery argument isn't it? The payoff of winning is so great why wouldn't you buy a ticket? ) The trouble is it doesn't shine a lot of light on things, you could fall on the pavement and bang your head, people do, but by and large we're not going to wear a helmet so you know it's nothing like that simple.

daved wrote:bandit

Of course it adds to the debate ...it shows the scale of the number of relevant incidents in context we are discussing and at least shows a few facts rather than solely stating what people "feel" ...and no one else had seemed to have given us the facts...just feelings

you'd have thought wouldn't you? :D

admin wrote:Fact-based arguments always work best - ad hominem attacks never work and will be removed in any case... so keep it polite and state your case!

apparently at least two parts of that aren't true )

Far Queue wrote:
I appreciate that many collisions result in general body damage, but this is not very likely to be life threatening. It is the head damage which can either kill or affect people for life. I have just read in the printed version of the Good Ski Guide that the Swiss have an annual 70,000 snowsport accidents (yes that was seventy thousand), 10% of which are head injuries. That makes 7000 banged heads a year just in Switzerland. The Swiss have assigned a budget of 2.5 million Francs to run a campaign to try to reduce this.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those figures, but they are certainly higher than I would have thought.

I was amazed by that so I checked the data and it's broadly correct. But some points they don't really make clear are that only 5% of injuries are related to collisions or that this figures include activities like sledging and ski touring, so a quick slice through the data seems to show only 40% is skiing or snowboarding. I also think the data is sourced from medical reports so if you turned up at the doctors with sunburn for example that would count )

ou can see some of that data on the bfu – Swiss Council for Accident Prevention website http://www.bfu.ch