Grey Areas

As backcounty snowboarders, we constantly live life in the grey area between safe and dangerous. No slope is ever 100 percent stable. It all comes down to each person's acceptable level of risk. If you pay attention to what the snowpack is telling you it can be easier to make smart decisions. Today was a perfect example of life in the grey area. This morning Tanner Crow, Mike Meru, John Perry, and myself decided to boot up one of Little Cottonwood's popular roadside attractions, Suicide Chute. It has been a very lackluster start to the season here in Utah. We had a big storm in late September, some of which is still lingering around at the bottom of our meager snowpack in the form of depth hoar. After a few small storms in early October, high pressure moved in and hasn't really let anything through since. A 12 inch dump a week before Thanksgiving did little to add to our snowpack thanks to record warm temperatures right after. Our first true storm came six days ago, dumping about 18 inches of snow in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon. Since then, and for at least another week, we are high and dry here in Utah. We were expecting Suicide to be pretty bony, even though it is rather protected from direct sunlight. The apron of Superior was an absolute minefield. The lower half of Suicide felt pretty good on the bootpack up. There wasn't a ton of snow, but enough to ride. Things started to change about halfway up. We noticed a few shallow, isolated wind slabs, but we were not super concerned with them because they were very shallow, almost more of a wind crust. But still, something to keep in the backs of our minds. About three quarters of the way up things changed even more. The top quarter of the chute had obviously been wind loaded after the last storm. The top was super filled in compared to the rest of the line. Group decision was to dig a pit and see what was going on underneath. The setup we discovered was about two feet of four finger hardness snow on top of a pencil hardness ice crust on top of fist hard facets to the ground. Our extended column test scored ECTP 24 with Q2 shear. This is where that grey area comes into play. We all decided it was time to turn around. And we all felt it was the right decision. The Utah Avalanche Center rated the danger as low on all aspects and elevations. We did get a result on our ECT and it did propagate across the whole column. However, with it failing on the fourth hit from the shoulder, a lot of people would probably come to the decision to ride the slope anyway. Their rationale being, it could slide, but it probably won't. Again, it all comes down to that level of acceptable risk. Yeah, we probably could have continued up and rode from the top with no issue. However, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. We had a suspect setup in our pit, followed by a test result that did not make us comfortable continuing on. We also had a lot of rocks in the lower part of the chute and apron that would make even a small avalanche have high consequences. We still made some fun turns today. And we made it home safe. So it was still a successful day. I also felt that we communicated as a group very well in coming to our ultimate decision to turn around. Did we make a good decision? Yes, there is nothing wrong with backing off if you aren't fully comfortable with something. Could we have continued up and rode from the top without incident? Yeah, probably. That's life in the backcountry, though. You're constantly in that grey area. You just have to use whatever resources at your disposal to make smart decisions.