SkierLoganI can see ducking the occasional rope if your well experienced and have all the avalanche, and being with a group. Most will disagree but that's there problem. You have to use comon sense.. Something this guy was not doing obviously. I think he should be charged, why would someone in there right mind lead 10 kids into a danger zone.
If you're "well experienced", huh?
What if you trigger a slide that buries some oblivious, innocent person on open terrain below? What good will your avalanche gear do you if you get caught and buried? What about the patrol and/or rescuers who then have to come attempt to either save your life, or dig up your body and call your mom, and in doing so, are putting themselves in a potentially life threatening situation trying to help you?
If you're ducking ropes into avalanche terrain, you're at best a kook, and at worst, completely selfish and an asshole. I don't care how experienced you are, experienced people die just the same....actually no, they die more often. I've dug dead people bent in horrific ways out of avalanche debris. People whose experience dwarfed my own.
If you don't know or aren't aware that the rope you're ducking leads to avy terrain, you're even more of a fucking idiot. Ski areas aren't disney world. There's no way to mitigate any and all risks. No ski area purposely doesn't open safe terrain, it's in their best interest to open as much terrain as efficiently as possible. If it's closed, it's closed for a reason. Even if the odds as they were are relatively low, where do you draw the line? At 10% likelihood? And, the truth is, avalanche professionals can't ever be certain about a slope's relative safety. And, if we're talking about continental snowpacks, like where I am, the spatial variability is so great and the snowpack is so fragile that anyone who tells you with absolute certainty that a slope is totally good to go is completely full of shit. The best of the best get bit.
This shit pisses me off. Because, you're probably also the guy who would sue a ski area in the aftermath after knowingly entering closed terrain by trying to say the signage wasn't good enough. But, it's all good!! You're experienced, and you have avy gear, so fuck it, huck it!
