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Avalanche Prevention Question
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when ski patrollers are making their routine avalanche prevention rounds or after big storms,what do they use to trigger the slide, and how? Thanks
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A bomb thats what u here on powder days before the good stuff is opened up
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yeah, usually a charge. sometimes they do it while ur skiing at my mountain and scares the shit out of me when they do cuz its so god damn loud
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there are many different ways of doing this. The most common are hand charges. However sometimes resorts spend a lot of mney on cannons,howitzers and other complex machines, but most likely they are hand charges
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thanks one last question, with the hand charge how do they "deploy it" like do they throw it , place it or launch it?
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Usually a hike up and place. Alot of time they just assess snow stability, and if it's in no danger of sliding, they will let it chill.
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ive seen them do both, throw them and place them...and they do use rockets on the cannons sometimes, and howitzers
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i was wondering if you can buy hand charges for back country acsess or if it only a ski patrol thing
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^^wouldnt that be like eligail cause its like a bomb
cause if you want bombs like that then you might not be ready to ski backcountry stuff
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depending on the size of the charge i think you need a permit
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i was just wondering man, and fear has nothing to do with skiing ability. I have never caused a slide and I have always checked snowpack, but you can never be to carful, plus you could be able to open up so many new lines
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generally half sticks, ski above, light, toss...boom. If they can't get above it, tie it to a rope that spans the area with a big knot in the middle, throw it out, let the rope do the placement. And a fair amount of resorts have howisters, pretty awesome to watch.
In the bc, a lot of Heli opperations drop bombs. But could you imagine if everybody could, so many deaths from people setting off slides onto others or themselves.
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its liek a rocket launching pad for 1.5 foot rockets. at fernie, anyways.
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fireworks make a good replacement
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ok mr armadajh no you can to buy charges and why the hall would you want to do that in the bc, you dont know if any one else is in the area, you might bury them without kowing, ski patrolers that use the charges follow strick guidlines when deploying them. sometimes they are throw in, rarly are they placed just because of the ovious danger. they also use cannons or howitsers(sp?)
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placing hand charges can be totall sketch somtimes, i watched them put a hand charge on the end of a rope and swing it over a 40 foot cornice at mt ashland, then they blow the shit outta that thing and car size chunks went flying down this run, then they dropped the ropes so you could ski through a giant pile of death cookies.
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the head patroller simply gets an erection and voila, an avalanche.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
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dumbest. idea. ever.
some random guy thinks hes some kind of expert just because he checks snowpack and has been lucky enough to never set off an avalanche so lets give him a MOTHER FUCKING BOMB!!!!
no bueno.
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mammoth as an example , even if its bootpacked and blown up it still can slide.
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Skiing mag had a good artical on this a while ago. lots of different ways.
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ive skiid that, i forgot what its called but its rad steep and fun and you can get techy in the rocks. i think its either the face or the chutes or something along the lines.
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dont do it man! its no guarantee that it'll be safe. Does sound fun though chucking dynamite
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in fernie they have pre-made 5lb bombs, and they use 1lb a-mix bombs which they make themselves..it's a diesel fertilizer mix, samething dude used to blow up that building in oklahoma.
they use helicopters here every couple weeks to knock down the cornices on the ridge tops, other then that they toss hand charges, rope lower charges, they have 3 howitzers, and they ski cut.
some patrollers at castle mountain have taken charges with them while doing backcountry lines that 'threaten' then ski resort. They drop a bomb in the line, watch it slide, then ski it.
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Fernie was great for been shit scared skiing down and hearing things exploding near you, i'm totally surprised that the huge cornice aboce white pass wasnt blown down or didnt fall, it must have been hundreds of tonnes of snow with huge cracks in for most of the season.
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Patrol use a lot of zip lines for av control at my mountain because the most avalanche prone slopes are only bombable by sending charges down cliff faces on cable zip lines. I guess if patrol skied below the cliffs they'd risk cutting the slope and putting a patroller in danger.
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The shot it 5 times with the howitzer one morning...they barely even dented the bastards. That thing wasn't going anywhere.
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