Was a dramatic day on the Combeynot with the OH this morning.
I'd been up there yesterday with a mate and we went at a similar time this morning.
It's a big North face and this time of year can offer great Spring snow, but with things warming up there are a lot of natural avalanches occurring as snow warms up on the rocks and then purges down couloirs and the like.
After a great ski and refreshments at Fred's at the Lautaret, as we drove off I saw a huge avalanche happening in slow-motion.
We rushed back and I drove up further than normal and then ran up to the slide where I was relieved to see the two skiers we had been watching whilst having a drink who were having a few problems with the descent and ended up traversing across the face rather than skiing the fall-line.
I was running up with my arva in search mode shouting at the two guys to turn theirs off transmitting as I was picking them up, and then one of them took his backpack off to take his arva out of it!!
I was getting some very strange figures with a reading of 50m further up the debris and then nothing, so I asked one of them to use his and double check as he had no clue, and again he was the same.
Fortunately, they had called the PGHM and they were on the way, they were convinced that no-one was behind them on the face and I was pretty sure as well in that we saw no-one else, but it was such a massive slide.
I continued to clamber up the debris which was not that easy in my trainers and no socks, I did think that the only casualty of the day would be me busting an ankle.
I then saw another group of four skiers we had seen earlier on the climb, and they too kept their beacons on which didn't help to say the least. They should have split into two groups and skied either side of the slide searching but they decided to sit it out just as I heard the heli approaching and they made a series of passes over us presumably searching, then the heli dropped one guy off who came over and debriefed us and then the heli came back and dropped another guy off and then the two of them carried out a systematic search, and they continued to search the area as we left.
As for the technicalities of the slide, we're pretty sure it started from above the face off the ridge as the rocks became warm, and then as the snow came down it hit the main face and propagated across as you can see from the fracture/crown line.
The main face just after we skied down
Then and hour later
And the fracture line across the face and you can see an additional fracture well above that below the ridge.
The OH skiing parallel to that crown on the face and you can see the ridge / face in the background that went.
Et moi
And then this image pretty well puts things into perspective as to the scale of it, check the guy on the debris!
Heli over the slide.
And it's already made the Avalanche bulletin
ACTIVITÉ PRINTANIERE, POURSUITE DE L'HUMIDIFICATION A HAUTE ALTITUDE
Situations avalancheuses typiques : neige humide, neige ventée à haute altitude.
Ce vendredi en début d’après-midi, une grande avalanche de neige humide a été observée dans le secteur du Lautaret/Combeynot. Versant nord / zone de départ vers 2500/2600 m.
Really interesting point on the arva modes. Very important that everyone who is safe and in the vicinity immediately goes to search mode. The signal obviously carries much better and for a surprising distance above snow and can massively complicate any search. Easy to forget to in the shock of seeing something like that.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
An impressive video taken of the slide when it was much faster at the beginning than when we saw it
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
What a terrifying experience - well done for pitching in and not just being paralysed.
After all it is free
After all it is free
This morning I cycled up to the Lautaret and then up the Galibier road as far as it was open as they are currently working on clearing it and took a couple of photos
And now zoomed in
The slide from the obvious crown is 750m and then if you add the slide from above it's nigh on a km.
I took this one when I was clambering up through the debris searching, before the heli arrived, and I've highlighted where I left my van and then legged it to the start and then up through the debris, no wonder I was a tad knackered last evening and my HR figs were higher than when I ski-toured up there a couple of hours before, it must have been a good 1.5km from the van!
One thing depressingly sure is that if God forbid someone was in there they would have been crushed and I doubt if I would have been able to dig them out quickly as it had set like cement, probably almost requiring a digger!
That was the first time my OH had been up there as it freaks her out a little as it's so open, and in her belief steep & exposed, but I managed to talk her into it as I'd had such a good ski the day before, even though she'd packed all her gear away for the season.
This was her first experience of a big slide and needless to say she has now vowed that's it for this season
And this morning I counted, those I could see, about five up there.
Think the moral of the story, as I saw a lot of other big slides in the Trois Eveches sector when on the bike this morning, is that if the freezing level is over 3,250m then don't venture out?
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@Weathercam, ...any explanation for the weird signals? Interesting that it was repeated on the other skiers beacon. I was doing a practice and had very weird 'ghost' signals which made no sense at all in relation to the buried beacon. The Facebook film suggests no one skiing in the path of the slide, so no-one encased in, as you say, snow which is equivalent to concrete...
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Has this incident gone down as a "near miss or too close for comfort"......@Weathercam,
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