20090211 Happo Gara Gara Zawa

11 Feb 09

Size 1. Start zone,1850m, NE aspect, 35 degrees. Terminus 1800m. Crown wall between 20 and 40cm thick, Sliding surface was the crust that is all over Hakuba.

After two of us carefully rode this small bowl, the third jumped off the cornice, crashed and added significant additional load to the slope. It was the wrong thing to do on a day when the NE aspect were clearly loaded with soft slab on an ice crust. I never encourage jumping anything in the backcountry, particularly cornices. The snowboarder was unburied and unhurt.