Sammy C for president. Enough said.

12/05/23 - This week’s stoke:

What we’re watching:

• Nikolai and Krister race for a couloir speed record - One of the best things about watching Nikolai Schirmer clips is that they always manage to have fun and not take themselves too seriously, all while skiing at an insane level. This episode takes that to an extreme as they see how fast they can point it down an extremely tight couloir with a hilarious voice over.

• Chasing rare lines in Montana - Most of have dream lines that only line up once in a rare while. Montana local Wiley Miller has been chasing one line in has backyard for years. This short film shows how the power of mother nature can both fill our dreams and our nightmares with its power.

The Beta:

• First Ascent of Mount Jannu's North Face - When an alpine climb makes the NY Times, it's big news. Back in late October, alpinists Alan Rousseau, Matt Cornell and Jackson Marvell completed what many of their peers were calling the last great climbing problem in the Himalaya - free climbing the North Face of Nepal's 25,295-foot Mount Jannu. The face includes a headwall roughly the size of El Cap that has vexed climbers for decades. We're stoked to see some mountaineering coverage in a big paper!

• Larges storm hits the inter mountain west over the weekend - A large winter storm impacted the inter mountain west and the PNW over the past weekend. The storm brought 20-35 inches of new snow to most areas including Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington. The storm started out cold but then got warmer which led to some dreaded upside-down snow in many areas. While this will eventually set up well for building a solid base it will create more dangerous avalanche conditions in the short term in all the areas impacted.

Elevating the Craft:

• The effects of depth variability on avalanche probability and size - This one is for the science nerds out there. This paper if fairly technical but the outcomes are quite interesting. The authors looked at the how spatial variability in slab depth can affect the probability of a skier-triggered avalanche and the size of the avalanche if one was triggered. This was done via statistics-based computer simulations. The finding show that when the mean slab depth is above 1 meter a slab with high variability (eg. it's thin in some places and thick in others) is more likely to produce an avalanche then one with low depth variablity (it's uniformly thick). On the other hand, the size of the avalanche is likely to be smaller in that case. In addition they show that skiing close to existing tracks in variable-depth terrain reduces your chances of triggering a slab and skiing with a large across/down ratio also reduces the probability of finding weak spots. That's science speak for straight lining.

• How did Ortovox re-design their LiTric airbags - Last year, there was quite a bit of hype over Ortovox's new LiTRIC electronic airbags - except you might have noticed they were nowhere to be found on shelves and on the skintrack. That's because they were recalled right after they were initially released in Europe due to a small plastic piece breaking off inside the fan unit. Ortovox and Arcteryx have since fixed the issue (WildSnow has more details). The bags are now available for sale in North America and seem to be a great option for those of us looking for a light avalanche airbag for ski touring.

  
  
  

  Thanks for reading and see you next week,
  Max Ritter and Andrey Shprengel