I am quickly gaining an appreciation for the severe danger of skiing in warm weather and deep snow. For example, Lou Dawson has posted an in-depth look at an avalanche that just killed two people:

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Check out this temperature graph from a snowtell site near the accident. Red line indicates temperature at the time of the accident, which was 48 degrees and spiked!

Interestingly, from a report I received from a source it appears the avalanche victims were attempting to stay in a slightly safer area of sparse trees on the side of a ridge just below timberline. But as is too often the case, when a deep slab triggers, sparse trees do nothing but provide things for you to hit as you’re swept away.

There is a lot to learn online, such as from sites like the Forest Service National Avalanche Center, Sierra Avalanche Center and the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, with a look at risks including a recount of who did and did not have survival gear and how they were found. All I can say is that being in deep snow is probably the most physically exhausting space I have ever experienced, and being strapped to a board pulling your feet can have a scary effect.

Mammoth Main Lodge Gondola at Twilight

…after riding an epic warm pow-day off 22 (that’s the tip of a 40 ft tree on the left, at the start of the “shaft”)

Photos by me.

Many things appear wrong with the security of the rider in this video, and here is just a list off the top of my head:

1. Soft skin-tight speed suit instead of motorcycle-grade textile with hard armor
2. Lightweight head-gear that seems to move around instead of a full-face motorcycle helmet. The first thing that happens on impact is the helmet rips off…
3. No protective skin or balaclava on the rider’s face, under the flimsy helmet
4. No pedaling, yet a rough/dirty surface. Why not use a smooth surface? What is this testing? Might as well drop the guy from an airplane to see how fast he falls. Would they give him a parachute?
5. Separation of the headtube seems to result from hard hit and bottoming out the fork. So little range on the fork and no reinforcements for high-speed stress?

I am sure there are more, but without further ado…

The PCI SSC clarified today in the December 08 Assessor Newsletter that OS logging is suitable for file integrity monitoring (FIM):

This month the Council received several questions surrounding the use of file integrity monitoring from assessors evaluating applicability of Requirement 10.5.5 and 11.5.
[…]
There may also be native functionality to the operating system or smaller applications that could be considered, especially when commercial products are not available for the system. Let’s take the example of workstations. A merchant shouldn’t have to install commercial FIM on each and every one of their 10,000 workstations outside the cardholder data environment if the appropriate local logging and network monitoring are enabled.

A comment like “appropriate x and y are enabled” sounds good but really does not clarify much more than the existing text. We come right back to what is appropriate? On the other hand, when they say “merchant shouldn’t have to install commercial FIM on each and every…”, great clarity is achieved.

Here is an official update from Whistler Blackcomb on their Doppelmayr/Garaventa gondolas, from early this morning:

Whistler Mountain will open for regular morning operations as early as 7:30am, as the Whistler Village Gondola and the Creekside Gondola are different types of lift installations and have different tower structures. Remaining Whistler Mountain lifts as well as Blackcomb Mountain lifts are expected to open when the secondary inspection by BCSA is complete. The one exception is the Excalibur Gondola, which will remain closed.

Twenty maintenance staff inspected the lifts last night and concluded that the Excalibur Gondola tower failed due to a leak. Water entered the tower, turned to ice and expanded between two parts that were spliced together, causing the structure to rupture. This is apparently known as “ice-jacking” (cyclic incremental movement by ice leading to failure from microcrack propagation).

“As always, our top priority is for the safety and well-being of our resort guests and employees,” says Doug Forseth, senior vice president of operations. “Whistler Blackcomb will delay opening some of our lifts this morning until the BCSA can confirm our findings and provide a secondary inspection. After the work conducted throughout last night by our own lift maintenance team, and a secondary inspection that will be completed this morning by the BCSA, access to both Whistler and Blackcomb is expected to be available by midday.”

Two cabins actually hit the ground and twelve people out of 53 on the gondolas were taken to the Whistler Medical Clinic. All were released soon after.

No word yet from the BC Safety Authority on whether joints on towers will be subjected to regular X Ray inspections, as that probably would have detected a faulty weld and the ice-jacking.