That occurred in 1996 when I was young, confident and arrogant. Now I am older and more scared… : )}

Yeah, there is one slope that I wonder if it will get me…perhaps more Rutschblock Tests this year, but you see, I just hate to break up that line,…I do try to get get around the increased hazard through familiarity by doing intensive avalanche hazard mitigation by throwing my body and skis at it repeatedly.

Glad to hear you survived. You are much like a cat with 9 lives tht has 1.5 left.

I would not be surprised to hear that the reason that the cornice dropped was due to it’s liberal agenda, which is not being published in the MSM.

BTW, nice job on keeping Blewett Pass clean.

-Your friends in North Bend

Here is the revelant passage (begining on pg. 290):

“On the slopes of Mammoth Mountain, to the south of the pass, I aw many gaps in wood reaching from the upper edge of the timber-line down to the level meadows, where avalanches of snow had descended, sweeping away every tree in their paths as well as the soil they were growing in, leaving the bed-rock bare. The trees are nearly all uprooted, but a few that had been extremely well anchored in clefts of rick were broken off near the ground. It seems strange at first sight that trees that had been allowed to grow for a century or more undisturbed should in their old age be thus swished away by stroke. Such avalanches can only occur under rare conditions of weather and snowfall. No doubt on some positions of the mountain slopes the inclination and smoothness of the surface is such that avalanches must occur every winter, or even after every heavy snow-storm, and of course no trees or even bushes can grow in their channels. I noticed a few clean-swept slopes of this kind. The up-rooted trees that had grown in the pathway of what might be called ‘century avalanches’ were pile in windrows, and tucked snugly against the wall-trees of the gaps, heads down-ward, excepting a few that were carried out into the open ground of the meadows, where the heads of the avalanches had stopped.”