Fattwins, you know just enough to gab about it a lot. Whether I ride or not has got nothing to do with it, as you well know.

I think they're informercials and nothing more, but hey, if you want to base your decisions on them go right ahead. :that waving smiley:

I hate to even bring myself to reply to the fool, but.... informercials for what exactly???

cancer ... warning ... fool very polite. SJ moderation hitting a new low here.

Infomercials for Hakuba BC courses.

Well I never thought it would turn out like this. Can't you just give it a rest?

Ocean11, what do you get out of this? Do you just get kicks out of doing all you can to cause a fuss out of nothing or what?

If I cared I would truly feel sorry for you.

I think you should shut down the site completely.

It is obviously an informercial for winter sports in Japan, and that is just not acceptable. It's OTT blatant. And it should stop, NOW!

The report states that danger is high above the tree line. In the Hakuba valley, only the very top part of Happo resort is above the tree line. The top course there is not steep, faces east and is on a ridge (the "one" of Happo-one). For those of you interested, the men's downhill in the 1998 Olympics started halfway up this top course. The wooden starting gate lower down was for the womens race.

Everything else at the other resorts in the valley is below the tree line.

The only resort I can think of with a steepish south facing course would be Cortina. Off the ridge to skiers left down to the main course. Cortina's main steeps face north. Happo's steeps face east. 47 and Goryu's face east/north east. Tsugaike has no steep courses. Iwatake's short steeps face east and appear to be closed. If you leave the courses, every resort has south-facing steeps.

Last week, a long crown fracture, i.e., the wall of snow left where the snow cracks during a slab avalanche, could be seen on Norikuradake above and behind Tsugaike. I saw it from Iwatake, 10km away. As the report says, that's going to be huge.

On the whole, I wouldn't be so concerned about infomercials for avalanche courses because there is no real money in them. Just as there is no money in guiding if you don't take people to the biggest lines on the one day of the season they can go there. Safety-first doesn't pay.

Thanks Mr Wiggles.

The Bc courses are all finished Ocean done 1 week ago, for a know it all you base your judgements many times on no facts but those that you make up.

Yes, why isn't Ocean11 banned?

If this continues any more, we WILL take the sad step of banning people from using the forums. Feel free to try and come back to this with sarcastic comments if you wish to 'test us'.

Hes a closet wannabe BC skier

I think we've all made our points. Let's just let it rest and let this new avo section get back on track, survive, and thrive. I don't think any of us (wherever you stand in this - and I'm not excluding myself) is achieving anything by dragging it on.

I'm voting with the moderator. Give the section a chance by letting it all rest.

I'm more than happy with the backcountry conditions notices available on this site. Concerning Hakuba in particular they make perfect sense to me because I'm familiar with the areas being talked about. I can also understand most of the terminology and descriptions used. They're what you'll read in texts and what you talk about with other skiers/boarders.

Great clarification posted there MrWiggles. I would take any advisory indicating a high degree of danger on South facing steep slopes above the treeline as a caution for similar areas anywhere below the treeline, onpiste or not. On piste is generally controlled by the resort and they may close areas for this reason. There are plenty of off piste danger areas as desribed in the advisory accessible by skiing right off the lifts eg Tsugaike South faces or the Goryu gondela area. Right now I wouldn't go anywhere like that, I'd stick to tree-lined slopes more-or-less.

Doing a certified avalance awareness course didn't make me an expert, a pointy-headed know it all, or the member of some exclusive club of high-noters. It did however make me think twice about the safety of what I was doing. It was a bargain,and one of these days I'll do the same two days again as the refresher componant of a five day advanced course. I doubt the courses ever make a huge amount of money, but if they did it'd be well deserved earnings.

I think I know sweet #### all about the very important topic of riding safely. Wearing a beacon and all the knowledge in the world can become a moot point once you're buried. That's one of the first things you learn if you read a book or do a course on the subject. Anyway SJ, keep the reports coming and the information flowing.Cheers.

I agree with the folks here, please post what you can.

(So, was anyone banned?)

No, no-one was/is banned. We really really don't want to do that. (And if we did, we'd post to let people know.)

yeah cheers for the info