Yesterday, while skiing out of bounds on the south west canyons of Mt. Hood, I experienced a small and extremely mild quake. This, combined with the melting conditions caused an extremely small avalanche in the canyon region we where in.
This was extremely mild in the spectrum of what is shown on TV or from what I've seen in other videos. A snow field of a bout 100 sq.m, shifted about 100 m down hill. And while mild, this was still my first ever experience in this type of situation.
Im a fairly experienced skier and we were already traveling downhill at about 35 mph +/- (we were tracking with a racing GPS app), when the snow "gave out from under". In normal "powder" and "good" snow, it normally feel like im floating on the snow. In this situation, it felt like I was being pushed from behind, while sinking under. Maneuvering was next to impossible and the only option to accelerate was to "tuck". While initially I accelerated a little, the snow caught me and my group rather easily and rapidly. Gladly, no one was hurt, but my questing are as follows:
If all free falling objects accelerate at the same rate (this was on a fairly steep mountain section), why did we get "trapped" into the avalanche, when our acceleration already had 35 mph +/- accelerating it? Did the thicker snow breaking and shifting somehow create more friction between my ski and the snow?
Most modern ski's today have alot more "nose curve", also known as rocker, in the front and back, in order to break through thicker snow with more ease The skis I was riding have what most in the ski world would call "excessive rocker". Why was it so easy for snow to sink me down, when my ski's design is for 2+ ft of snow and I was forcefully trying to "float" above the collapsing snow? This avalanche was tiny in the spectrum of perimeter and mass traveled., And also only lasted about 3 seconds.