The Whale's Back

I finally got the chance to ski a line that I've had my eye on ever since I first visited Whitewater: The Whale's Back. It's a fantastic line that takes you into some big avalanche terrain. The Whale's Back is actually a broad ridge between two gigantic avalanche start zones. It's a line off of Evening Ridge and offers a fantastic 2000 foot descent. Our ski line down in red.



Normally when I skin up to Evening Ridge, I've taken a path up through steep trees to gain the ridge line. However, today I thought we'd try and go through Hummingbird Pass because I'd heard it was faster. Well, it's not. The only thing it does is put you into a big terrain trap with lots of start zones above you and bad consequences if anything went wrong. We passed through today without problem, but I wouldn't go through there again. Steve in Hummingbird Pass.



A storm came through on Friday and Saturday and ended up leaving about 7 inches of new, wintery snow. On the way up the snow was very cold, dry and light, so there wasn't alot of concern about it turning into a slab because the sun wasn't out yet. Steve, Trevor, and I were all looking forward to light powder turns down this amazing line. However, about 20 minutes away from the top of our line, the sun decided to come out and it started baking our line. What we thought would be light powder started out a little heavy and got progressively heavier the lower we went. Steve, Joshua, and Trevor enjoying the heavy, but late season, powder.







Here's a little video of Steve on the lower half of the Whale's Back.



The sun's transformative power became quickly apparent to me the more we descended. The snow turned into heavy glop down low. I should have made myself pause a bit more before jumping into this line, having felt what I felt with the snow.



The sun had set the new snow up into a heavy slab and last weekends sun crust provided the perfect sliding layer. I ended up triggering a class 2 avalanche that fortunately I was able to get out of the way of, thanks to Steve yelling "Avalanche!" The slab broke about 30-40 feet wide and ran about 600 feet. Here I am with the avalanche starting to cut loose as I begin to get out of the way.



The start zone.



Looking down at the avi debris from half way down the slide path.



Looking back up. The crown and start zone are about 150-200 feet above this rollover.



Once I let everyone know that I was safe, Trevor began descending and inadvertently triggered another avalanche, class 1 to 1.5. I told Trevor to ski the bed surface of the path because he wasn't likely to trigger anything since it had already slid. The three of us skied down the path for a little bit before skiing mellow trees out and down to the bottom of the line.

Trev holding up some of the chunky debris.



Today was definitely an educational day. Honestly what impressed me the most was how much of a factor the sun can be, especially at this time of year where it sits high in the sky and the radiation effect is intense. The sun had really only been out for about 20-30 minutes before we dropped in, but that had been enough to turn cold, dry, blower snow into a dense, heavy, wet slab. It's always good to be able to learn these lessons and come home and write about them. Today was a good reminder to get even earlier starts this time of year and to never underestimate the power of the sun.