Today my ski partner and I received a sobering reminder about diligence in the backcountry. Embarking on an overly ambitious quest to ski Fossil Mountain in a day from JHMR, we ended up turning around close to 1:30PM once we realized that if we did continue, we'd be skiing out Granite Canyon with headlamps. (being thoroughly whipped contributed to the decision as well...)

For our descent, rather than retrace our skin tracks to a gentle draw at the mouth of Granite a mile back, we decided to find a more direct route through the cliff bands that guard the upper north flank of the Canyon. Once we got there, super steep pitches contributed to an inability to spot cliffs vs. skiable terrain. Once we finally found a passage, my partner led down the slope only to trigger a sizable slide that broke over 100 ft. long and 3 feet deep. After carrying him several hundred feet down the slope, my friend luckily walked away with nothing more than a shaken attitude.

In retrospect, we should have realized the wind-loaded southeast face posed serious snow risk. Exhaustion, moderate avalanche warnings and generally good stability during our approach were all distractions that contributed to a situation that could have had a much worse outcome.