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I certainly have, but the slough this past weekend was too much for me. I chose to play it safe climbing in RRCOS. I realize some don‘t mind that kind of risk, but lots of snow and 3 straight nights without a hard freeze makes me wet my safety pants.
The snowpack can freeze hard with slightly above 0C temps on a clear night, as I witnessed Sunday morning. These guys know when the snow is frozen under their feet.
I'm pretty sure that slide was the one that RoadMtnMan triggered one or two days prior when he was on Huron. It's actually a good thing that it had already gone or Andy and Jordan probably couldn't have skied it. I skied Princeton the day before with these guys, so I remember the upcoming weather conditions on Huron (didn't go because I'm fat and lazy) that day. As I recall, they had a sufficient freeze that night.
It's the time of year that you're going to see plenty of these slides if your a serious bc skier - kinda comes with the task. I see stuff like this quite often as do many other skiers. There's definitely more risk when you're skiing big peaks, so avy knowledge, planning, and gear is a must. As doumall mentioned, temps are a key component, in addition to aspect, load, etc. Most of us know the risks and plan as best as possible.
When we did Princeton the day before their Huron ski, we had an overnight freeze and warm morning temps so we knew what to expect on the ski descent. We knew what the previous storms had dropped, the type of consolidation to expect, and I remember trying to predict the depth of stuff that was going to slough off when we skied. It turned out that conditions were very close to what we anticipated. It doesn't always work out the way you want and sometimes the conditions can cause an aborted ski mission.
I'm pretty conservative when it comes to planning big mountain bc ski days, but I'm sure if people saw some of my photos they would think I was crazy or stupid for skiing a certain line. Pictures don't always tell the entire story. Sometimes the photos show you what could have happened if you were there on a different day!
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