I am not familiar with Kootenay Pass, don't know the area.

I don't know the victim or people involved in the accident.

Actually I don't know anything... But I'd like to comment this before anyone goes out of their way to be disrespectful. (Such as Lou Dawson commenting on the Colorado tragedy last spring.)

VERY IMPORTANT:

-None of the people in that party was expecting to trigger/get caught/die in an avalanche that day.

-They did NOT ignore all the obvious signs of instability.

A question for the readers: Did you ever ''space out'' on the uptrack? Did you ever ''expose'' one at a time?

If yes, does that mean you were expecting an avalanche to trigger/catch a skier/kill the skier?

The only way to make sure 100% not to have an avalanche fatality is to not go into avalanche terrain (hence not ski the backcountry). This snow science stuff is not an exact science and there are tons of very hard to understand factors such as spatial variability (especially), micro weather patterns, skier traffic.

So please don't rant about ''they should have done this'', ''they should have known better'', etc. Let the professional avalanche industry people to carry out an avalanche accident investigation if need be, and even that won't have all the facts/factors.

And be respectful. Thank you.

Hi

Likewise my condolences to family and friends of the person who died and also those injured. And likewise my thanks to SAR team and spontaneous volunteers who did the rescue.

I ski in the twin lakes area pretty often and it would be super helpful to know where the avalanche occurred. I've "heard" it was off of Lightening Strike. If so where on the ridge (its a long ridge). How wide was the propogation, how far did it run, etc.

That area is obviously avalanche terrain but its helpful to understand the avalanche history of a piece of terrain when deciding if, where and how to ski it.

Any facts from those who were there would be really helpful for the rest of us who ski that terrain.

Thanks