Paige Brady

Posts Tagged ‘backcountry.com’

So we left Fernie, BC early Tuesday morning and arrived in Salt Lake City late that night after a long day of driving.  Wednesday morning it had snowed another 9 inches in Little Cottonwood Canyon and I was excited get out with the Powderwhores for the first time this year.

Andy and I skinning up

We headed out towards Days Fork hoping we would get a break in the clouds.  The sun poked through and Andy Jacobsen dropped in.

Andy Jacobsen

I followed and must have been a little excited about the powder as I realized one of my new AXL bindings was still in tour mode, but I managed to maintain and probably wont forget that again.

Paige Brady

Paige Brady

Noah Howell filmed from above and then continued down a little more skiers left where he managed to find and hit I couple rocks but still made it look real good.

Noah Howell

Noah:

“Here’s where things got interesting. We had put in 5 tracks on this NE facing slope without noticing any avalanche concerns. The slope was skied one at a time with everybody pulling up in safe zones. We wanted to move down the ridge to the next area so we skinned back up a sub ridge which was a very safe terrain feature. Andy Jacobsen was breaking trail and we were once again spread out working to ’safe’ zones (trees and below cliffs) while skinning.  Jonah and Jay were going to wait below.  The ridge became too rocky to ascend so Andy cut out into the small bowl we had just skied.  Paige and I waited and watched and Andy made the ridge without incident. I started out and crossed a thin rocky area when heard the slope ‘thud’,  and then watched it release in a big way. I yelled avalanche and tried to work back to the ridge, but it was clear I was too far out onto the slope which had fractured about 250ft above me. The avalung was easy to grab and place in my mouth, I bit down hard and swam. Right at that moment I was submerged, grazed some trees and surfaced roughly 300ft down from where I triggered it. I yelled ‘I’m OK’ and Jay came down to make sure. He was convinced I was jacked up having seen me strained through the trees. Nothing but a bruise on my elbow and the loss of both ski poles for making a poor call.”

“Looking back we should have just avoided that aspect for the day, our vision was clouded by the drought we’ve been having. No excuses though, rule #1 is don’t get caught and we failed. Got away lucky on this one”

Noah looking down the slide path

- Thanks to Jay Beyer for the photos