underscoring avalanche risk

Serac collapse on Manaslu creates huge avalanche:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19697590

unfortunately, a disaster of similar scope to the 1995 storm on Everest chronicled in "Into Thin Air."

Good reminder, snow is comming and with it will be avy danger.

i'm not planning on climbing anything with this kind of avalanche possibility, and the scope of this is a little hard to get one's arms around because the mountains are so big.  i think it said the sheet of snow & ice that broke off was several hundred yards across. 

doesn't take a big slide to bury you. 

For the small number of people who are in the mountains in winter, as compared to the much larger number in the summer, the percentage who get killed is much, much higher. And most of it is from not being respectful or knowledgeable about avalanches.

But even if you do everything you're supposed to, the mountains don't care how much experience you have or how expensive your equipment is.

leadbelly2550 said:

...doesn't take a big slide to bury you. 

 A few years ago, I was at a business conference held at Snowmass (schedule was that the business meeting and presentations started one hour after the lifts closed, with a break for dinner at 8PM). About a week before the meeting, a woman had been skiing down an Intermediate slope, when an avalanche caught her (just at the side of the groomed run in the unskied powder, self-triggered as most avalanches are that catch people). Late in the day, and though several people saw the slide, no one saw her caught in it. One of her companions got worried when she wasn't at the bottom of the run. She was only buried about 3 feet deep, but unfortunately died before she was recovered.

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