Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I'm grateful for all the work this amazing man did to extend civil rights to all American citizens and for how that changed the entire face of this country. I hope what we have done as a nation since his untimely death is enough to make him proud and still feel the impact that he has made on all of us.

On the lighter side, I'm also very glad that because of him, Ben got the day off of school to go out on a great three day weekend trip with the Outdoor Programs. He was working and therefore it wasn't all fun and games but when your job is to ensure that everyone is safe and has a good time it usually isn't too bad :)

Saturday we all woke up early, made breakfast and geared up for a great day of touring. As our usual safety regimen mandates, we skied to the bottom of the slope we were hoping to shred all day and dug a pit to test the stability of the snow. The pit showed us through both the isolated column and extended column that the snow was very weak and unstable meaning that we needed to stay on the mellow, low, protected slopes to avoid any avalanche danger.
These pictures are all out of order but here it goes:

This is the beginning of the extended column test in which we see at what force we see cracking, propagation, and eventually shearing of the snow at any weak layers.

Me, goofing off while they dig the pit...

Tim and Chase watching the digging of the pit.

This would be Ben's usual craziness, we was thinking he could jump from where he's standing (in the blue coat) onto the little jellybean snow clump in the middle of the stream. He finally decided it was a bad idea because if he missed he'd land in the stream and be soaked and it was only the first day of the trip... therefore, not worth it!

And now back to the pit, this is Phil and Eric watching the pit as well.

Mike watching while Ben and Daniel dig the pit and isolate the column.

After a huge chunk popped out on our extended column test, we felt the snow on top of the fracture line and there it was: the "surface hoar." Basically, it's like dry, crystal like, sugar snow that doesn't adhere to anything else and makes the snow unstable and quite dangerous!

Ben writing down notes about the isolated column while Daniel prepares the extended column.

And finally, the first photo, Ben and Daniel preparing the isolated column test.

On Saturday night it snowed all night and continued on through all day Sunday and into the night. Sunday we were stoked about the 12 new inches of soft but wet snow. We skinned up and out, dug a pit again (expecting it to be even more unstable than the previous day) and to our surprise it was a lot more stable. We were feeling pretty good about our route, we were on about a 28 degree slope that flattened out and became very thick with trees above us so we were set to shred. We skied the best run of the season in these soft squishy pillows of powder and it was amazing! We were so excited to do it again so we quickly changed our skis back and started skinning up the hill again. On one of the switchbacks near the top of our trail, we saw a horrifically scary sight... A huge 2-4 foot deep avalanche had ripped out about 600 yards long just to the right of our trail! We instantly switched directions and went straight down that hill and took off to go find a new slope with a different directional aspect and less risk. We went to the hill directly across the river from where the avalanche had ripped out and we saw exactly why it happened. There was a huge open narrow chute that went from the peak all the way to the river. No wonder it slid! The scary part to me was that we were just there, we skied right by it and we didn't even hear it happen!!! How do you explain that?!

It continued to snow all night until the very early AM on Monday when it changed to rain! The rain made the snow so thick and heavy that none of us even wanted to go ski so we just had breakfast, geared up and headed home. We Made it home nice and early enough to clean up, hot tub, de-rig, and still have time to enjoy the amazing sunset from our patio.

What a great weekend!!!