Idaho Mountain Express: Baldy guiding is a reckless idea

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Baldy guiding is a reckless idea

The sidecountry off Baldy is an accident waiting to happen. With the combination of steep slopes, unstable snow, changing weather conditions and increased skier activity, it's only time before an accident or a death occurs. For the Forest Service to encourage greater use of an already hazardous situation is ill-advised.

Though the guiding community is very professional and takes their clients' safety as the No. 1 priority, the sidecountry has many more uncontrollable and unmanageable variables than the backcountry up north. Those variables are the multitude of existing sidecountry skiers.

Unfortunately, there are some sidecountry skiers who have little or no knowledge of avalanche science, avalanche equipment or avalanche experience. I have witnessed sliding snow set off by skiers above me and I have come across skiers who were lost and completely unprepared to be out in the sidecountry. For a professional guiding service to put its clients into this potentially dangerous situation is reckless. And if a client(s) or the entire guided group were caught in an avalanche, set off by another sidecountry skier or vise versa, it would be devastating for all involved and detrimental to our local ski economy.

Furthermore, for the Forest Service and the guiding companies to represent sidecountry skiing as relatively safe is putting revenues and profit ahead of common sense. And that is not the ethos of our mountain community. Therefore, I encourage the Forest Service to make the responsible decision and reject the sidecountry guiding proposal.

Jeff Smull

Sun Valley

comprare viagra
comprar viagra
viagra kaufen

About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged: