Decisions, decisions?
Aiguille Pourrie, Chamonix
Oh yeah, the buzz of ripping a nice heel-side slash down the final chute on the descent of the north face of the Aiguille Pourrie, above Chamonix.
But, out of the corner of my eye to my right, I see the snow’s surface breaking up into what looks like sizeable chunks and accelerating downhill past me.
It was a gorgeous day, the wind finally dropping after a top-up of snow a few days back. My mate (a skier who lived in the valley) and I had wanted something that had a short hike but was longer on adrenalin. One of the routes down from the Aiguille Pourrie, accessed via a short skin from the top of Brevent’s Cornu lift, fit the bill perfectly. But to be honest, apart from picking our route, our planning and discussion of the avi risk was pretty much nil, and this was despite me having a shiny new avi backpack on, armed and ready.
Looking back afterwards, I’m amazed at the number of cool and calm calculations that went on in my head in the scant few instants that followed me spotting the snow breaking up; how deep the slide was (I reckoned max 30cm); the fact that my friend, who’d gone down first, was just standing, watching and not looking too bothered, must indicate he was out of the path and that he didn’t reckon I was in any major trouble; the fact that I was still upright and had some control and was already heading away from the centre of it to, only 2-3 meters to it’s edge - all leading to a conclusion that I’d probably be fine and could probably get off the side - I just needed to turn downhill a bit to keep up with the snow moving under me and keep heading left. Plus one other conclusion: that I didn’t need to pull my shiny new avi bag’s trigger.
It turned out I was right, finally being inelegantly dumped on my arse by the last slowing-moving debris a few meters above my buddy. I’d guessed about right, it was a foot deep in the middle, though very quickly tapering off in depth to the edges, across a 5 or 6m crown. The debris went down maybe a hundred metres or more and if I had gone down with it, I reckon I’d have been knocked over, carried down a bit but not buried much. I still felt calm, and my mates first reaction was just to tell me he was mildly annoyed that I’d not pulled my bag - he’d not seen one of these electric jobs actually inflate.
Image and track courtesy of Fatmap (the avalanche crown and it’s track are the author’s addition)
We rode away calmly, hit some pistes for a bit and headed home. No cold sweats; no flashbacks. I have since gotten much more serious about taking avalanche risk into account in my route-planning, but something continued to bug me about this some time afterwards: the cold calculation I’d made to not pull the bag. I’d not forgotten it in my calculations; I’d consciously discounted pulling it, thinking it was not necessary.
My bag happened to be a Black Diamond Saga electric, fan-based design, rated for at least four pulls on a full battery (and yes, it was charged). On a day tour then, I shouldn’t have factored in any need to ration pulls on it; there was zero cost to me in triggering it - even one false positive would have left me 3 or 4 more pulls.
Now, if your avi bag is the more common (and lighter; more affordable) single-shot canister-based bags, then maybe you do need to make some sort of calculation. Pull it when it turns out to be a false alarm and you’ve left yourself without that protection - unless you have a spare canister - for at least the day, and hit your pocket into the bargain, just to refill it. But I didn’t need to take that into account.
So for me personally, the takeaway regarding the bag feels very simple, probably whatever type it might be – think less and just pull the bloody thing. Next time, I might not get the opportunity to do those calculations, or get them right.
Another view of the north side of the Aiguille Pourrie, The couloir is the clearly visible one under the summit, slightly skiers right, then down, with tracks going into to top of it