A group of climbers in France was lucky for two reasons: 1. They weren’t in the path of a massive avalanche/rock slide; and 2. They heard it coming so they caught it on film. Digging out of that one would require a front end loader in your kit.

via Grind TV

Naturally releasing avalanches in Washington State hit two separate groups Saturday, leaving two people hur, one woman dead, and a 61-year-old man missing. Conditions were rated “high” by the Northwest Avalanche Institute after a recent spring storm dropped boatloads of new snow. The first slide hit a group of snowshoers on Granite Mountain and carried [ more... ]

It’s tough to get a better seat to near disaster. A duo was climbing the Canale Holzer, a classic step line in the Dolomites favored by adventurous skiers. These two happened to be sitting at the top getting ready to drop in when it broke, and they caught it on film and had a nice laugh. At least now they know it’s clear to ski.

It’s been a grim winter in the backcountry of Grand Teton National Park, with a second death occurring this past Friday. An avalanche killed Jarad Spackman of Jackson Hole, sweeping him down a steep, narrow chute on Prospectors Mountain. He was with another skier at the time, who was unharmed but also unable to save [ more... ]

Backcountry skiing in Colorado is legal; rope ducking at non-designated exits, however, is against the law, and a very sketchy snowpack recently pummeled by several storms has the Summit County Sheriff’s Department warning skiers they’ll be prosecuted if they’re caught heading out of bounds. This comes in the wake of a snowboarder who ducked a [ more... ]

While skiing on a ski-patroller-led outing at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area 15 skiers managed to escape an avalanche relatively unscathed. The slide was outside of the boundary of the resort, “but the resort said that it had undergone “extensive” avalanche mitigation and explosive work in recent days.” Only one skier in the group had to [ more... ]

Good thing Matthias Giraud had planned on shooting off that cliff because there was a huge avalanche chasing him down. It’s a video from last season, though it just made its way across my desk. You can see the massive slide shooting off the cliff, right where Matthias begins to circle back toward before he gets control of his chute. His adrenaline-fueled behavior at the base seems reasonable, even if there hadn’t been an avalanche. After all, he did just ski off a cliff.

A duo skiing Mill Creek Canyon in Utah triggered an avalanche 700 feet wide that dropped over 800 feet. A 43-year-old woman was caught and buried, but she had a working transceiver and her partner was well prepared and able to locate and dig her out. She wasn’t breathing when he pulled her out and [ more... ]

A team of six experienced climbers were descending Bidean nam Bian in the Scottish Highlands on Saturday when an avalanche swept four of the group down the mountainside. They were killed in the 1000ft fall. A group of Royal Navy search and rescuers happened to be in the area at the time and sped to [ more... ]

Last week the Washington DOT fired up twin M60 tanks to blast around roads for avalanche control at Steven’s Pass on U.S. 2.  They usually take the tanks out from the hours of midnight to 6.a.m. so people in the area don’t see them and think that North Korea is invading (can you believe they remade Red Dawn?). In this case, 30 round were fired before the roads we reopened to motorists.