thats true toque but the pack was building bad layers due to wind, sun etc. those factors times the amount of people wanting the goods was not setting up well.

Snowconnection, lucky your friend had crampons!
Sorry, but what is a "curl"?

Sorry for using a wrong English "curl". It is "cirque" in English. The geographical term is well-known among Japanese montaineers and hikers pronouncing "curl". The pronounciation comes from Germanic "kar".

Glad we got that figured out
I was a little confused as well

Not really sure why Japanese peopley use curl though. As a a cirque does not curl at all.

I could see using curl for cornice as they somtimes curl. But a cirque does not curl.

This country can be very strange sometimes

Thank you SnowConnection for the clarification. It is much easier for me to understand now. It is interesting to see how the Japanese people use foreign words which they have adapted their own way (Pan, Marron, etc...). Sometimes the new meaning is not so obvious for non-japanese like us though!

Yes, strange indeed.

Mont Blanc -> monburan -> Ran Monbu

Did not know that one either.

just revisiting this thread, I met up with a riding mate recently and it turns out the guy that died in the tateyama slide used to be his boss. he talked to the surviving members afterwards (he wasn't there at the time) and said that they were skinning up in poor visibility conditions when the slide caught them all from above. later when visibility improved, there was a skier's line at the top of the slide. they are not sure 100% if that was the cause, but it doesn't look good.

That's interesting Montoya. I remember reading somewhere that those guys had ventured on a cornice in very bad vis and that the said cornice broke and took them down.

That sucks if a skier cut the slope above them. I would rather be caught in a slide because of my personal failure to assess risks properly than because of a third party's recklessness.