I'm Andrew McClain and we're in the Wasatch Backcountry to talk about one of the most important
aspects of ski mountaineering which is route finding.
So this is not a great route finding choice for backcountry skiing.
This is a deep steep gully and it's also known as a terrain trap and this is often gullies
like this are often the path of least resistance going up something but if you're inside of
one of these and you get a big slide coming down it's going to be magnified by the time
you get to the bottom.
So gullies for the most part should be avoided or treated very suspiciously.
A slope like this is very inviting and tempting because you could easily see your way up.
You can cut a bunch of really nice low angle switchbacks if you'd like but from a safety
standpoint it's not great because you've got really steep terrain at the top.
You can see there's some trees that have been taken out by avalanches.
You've also got a telltale cornice meaning that it's probably been wind loaded there
so it's much better if you can to get up onto the ridge rather than try to work your way
up through terrain like this.
Work finding in the backcountry sense is also synonymous with safety avalanche safety specifically
and because of that I really really like to find ridges such as this because ridges kind
of give you the high ground you're up out of the avalanche terrain you can look around
on both sides you can kind of get an idea of what the big picture is you're not in the
run out zones but there's a trick with ridges.
One of them is that ridges tend to get a lot of these cornices.
You don't want to get too close to a cornice or the thing can collapse and break off.
Going up a ridge line can be harder as far as skinning and making it up but it's much
safer and you need to keep in mind that you need to walk kind of a fine line between getting
too close to the edge of a cornice or too far into the avalanche prone slope but I always
look for ridges.
That's my all time favorite way to get up a slope in the backcountry.
Another thing I really like about ridges is that they form a very effective handrail
and a handrail is something that is useful when you're out in weather where you really
can't see where you are you can't get the big picture.
So if you're following a ridge and you wonder exactly how high you are on the ridge you
know you're on the ridge but you can look at a topo map easily identify the ridge then
look at your altimeter on your watch or your phone and say okay I'm on this ridge I'm
at 9,500 feet and it's very easy to locate where you are and cornices are known as the
bombs of the backcountry.
You're up on high ground you're in a safe spot hopefully and it gives you an opportunity
to stomp on a cornice and see if anything avalanches so yet another reason to go up
ridge lines.
If you're out enrolling terrain and you have trees in the area you're skiing I really
like to skin around trees especially if you can't see where you're going because if you
have a great big tree like this that's usually a pretty good indication that there's not
a big avalanche path above you if you can't see what's up there.
So skinning around trees skinning through trees it's a nice safe way to move around.
A really important concept on higher danger days such as today where the avalanche danger
is building is to look at your entire route that you're thinking of heading up and really
be aware of just those little sections that little 1% or 5% sections that have no safe
avenue up them in this case we're looking at a slope behind us that there is no safe
way to go up this in elevated avalanche danger so you've come all the way up this nice safe
valley you've gone through the trees you've stuck on ridge lines and you want to make
it up to the summit but there's just this one little chunk that separates you from the
summit and it's almost guaranteed that that's where the avalanche is going to occur.
So if you're looking at doing a bigger objective it helps to look at a map and maybe take a
more circuitous longer route that's going to be 100% safe to make it up if you have
the option rather than trying to force your way through a smaller more dangerous section.
