Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board December Avalanche at Mammoth

http://www.telemarktips.com/FSneverSame.html

Small excerpt:

"Sounds like patrol is still doing control work, they must be somewhere on the backside," I thought to myself as I began to get my camera out. Staying focused on the task at hand, my next thought was, "This would be a good angle to have Tim ski right to me this time." I turned my head uphill to tell him this, but never got a word out. Instead, my jaw dropped open in shock and awe. It was a sight I will never forget as long as I will live: a wall of snow 10 feet high and some 100 feet wide rushing and rumbling down the wide gully known as "P3," heading straight for *Rob, a good friend and ski partner of ours who had just taken a fall at the top of the wide apron below. He was still cleaning out his goggles and gathering himself up as I shouted over to him, "ROB, AVALANCHE!!"

Also of interest is the mention of Lee Frees, one of my avalanche instuctors!

Interesting account. I wonder if they'd had the opportunity to view that slope prior to the avalanche from where the photo had been taken, and if so would they have skied that slope on that day.

It's been alot of years since I've skied Mammoth and I don't know where that slope is.

I haven't skied there for awhile either, and didn't recognize the names. I know that they've opened some new areas, and thought they might be there?

I believe the "P" stands for paranoids. There are three of them and they are located on the fare right side from chair 23 (at the top). Steep narrow and rocky is how I would describe them.

I am shocked that such a large avalanche occurred in an avalanche controlled, in-bounds area. The patrollers obviously overlooked a big hazard when they opened that section of the mountain. Maybe I'll think twice before I jump on a slope after a big dumping instead of blindly trusting the decision of the ski patrollers that the area is "safe."

This just highlights that avalanche prediction and control is part art and part science, but the art portion makes prediction difficult. While you can say that a given slope has a low probability of avalanching, it is difficult to say that it is zero (unless there is no snow on it).