This happened on the Alberta side, if the news reports are accurate.

I am not a climber, let alone an elite climber like these gentlemen clearly were. So, my calculus of risk/reward is probably amateurish in the extreme.

But I do watch mountain conditions. There have been heavy thaws and freezes this winter in the Canadian Rockies, interspersed with heavy dumps of snow. I believe the avalanche forecasts have been very high on the scale. Spring makes these increasingly variable -- a morning slope will hold, an afternoon slope will slip.

I bear them no ill will; given the tributes, they have contributed much.


But from my chair here, I have to wonder why they were out.

My 2c.

"We took chances, we knew we took them. Things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for regret."

Robert Falcon Scott - last page of his diary

Wise words. Fair enough.