Avalanche fataly incident report - Smithers, BC - 02-26-11

[Shorty_J]

The following is a letter I wrote to my friends and family about an incident I was involved in. It was something I had to do for myself and for them, and my statement allowing them to send it to anyone they want was made without realizing how far and fast it would travel.

I suspect it's too late to keep this from getting out into the media, and if any members of Brenda's family find this information through a third party rather than me, I sincerely appologize. I really hope it isn't too traumatic for you to read about, and I'm sorry you couldn't hear it directly from me first. Efforts have been made to contact her next of kin but those have not been successful.

At any rate, this is what I wrote. Please feel free to ask any question at all... no holds barred.

==========================================

To all my friends and family…

First of all, I want to apologize for the cryptic way that some of you have been dealt with by me in the last few days. The reason Laura posted what she did on Facebook is that she didn’t want people to be worried about my safety based on reports from the radio. The CBC has been broadcasting regularly about an avalanche near Smithers BC that was not only in the group with which I was skiing, but I was in fact, directly involved in the slide. I appreciate the emails, texts, and calls of question and concern, but I needed to get myself home and put the events to a permanent form before trying to explain the whole thing to everyone individually… partly in the interests of efficiency and not having to repeat the same story 100 times, and partly because in the last 24 hours I started questioning 1 or 2 parts of the events as I recall them. I have since confirmed for myself that my initial thoughts on the event are accurate, but I still feel like I need to write it down in case I start doing the same thing again.

This description will be as complete as I can recall, and will be very graphic and probably disturbing, so if that will trouble you, perhaps you should wait until you’re home in a comfortable environment to read this. I apologize if this is the case, but telling this story in detail is something I need to do for myself… I hope you all understand. If you just don’t want to read this, I totally understand.

So I will preface my account by saying that I am certain I will never be so judgmental of anyone caught in an avalanche ever again. Many of you who have discussed the subject with me have likely heard me say how often when people are caught and killed are often “clearly” in situations where they have violated one or more of the key precautions that can be taken to minimize a groups risk while they are in avalanche terrain. I put clearly in quotes because my opinions are often formed from news reports on the radio, and it is clear from how inaccurate the news reports on this incident have been, that they have no idea what they are talking about most of the time on this subject, and I now question any “facts” I’ve heard from sources like this.

I will leave names out of it for now since the families don’t want this information made public, but our group of 10 skiers split up into 3 groups in the morning with different objectives for the day’s activities, and the group I joined with included 2 very experienced mountaineers with likely 30+ years each of experience, and an older woman who’s experience level I am unaware of, but I would not be surprised if she also had more experience than I do. The two gentlemen also seemed to be very cautious individuals… I base this assessment on the discussions and decisions we made on the way up the hill, and even how the one individual drove a car that we shared on the 14 hour drive to Smithers. Before I make the next statement I would like to make clear that any time a group is involved in a slide, it is the fault of everyone in the group and I am by no means trying to reduce my culpability by the next statement… I’m just trying to get you to understand part of the reason why I think things happened the way they did. To be 100% clear, I fucked up big time. Because I was (one of) the least experienced people, I approached the day as someone who would sit back and learn from those who had done more than I have in my life and take more of an observer role. We did have discussions of what we were doing and what our objectives were on the way up and the group agreed every time. But at the critical moment, we all became complacent. The other major factor involved is that on the hike up the mountain we noticed a lot of complicated terrain with small cliff and bowl features that could be dangerous if we were to get separated, so an openly stated intention to stay very close together on the way down was made to deal with this danger. The problem is that we kept this in mind as our primary concern at the expense of paying attention to whether or not we should even be on the slope we were going down.

So we got to the slope in question and one of the older gentlemen skied out on the slope cautiously. He said something I didn’t really hear over the wind and then started to ski down when he fell down and lost a ski. The ski was about 6-8 feet above him and out of his reach, and the woman skied down towards him to retrieve the ski and help him get it back on. I think all of us felt a bit funny about this slope because the other gentleman went to the edge of the slope and tried to do a little cut test with his ski and was only able to get the top couple of inches of snow to move. He then said something along the lines of “this slope is really wind loaded, but it should be OK”. I don’t want to get into debating what factors came into us knowing that information and going on the slope anyway, because I don’t fully understand them myself. At any rate, as soon as he said that and skied of down the slope I got a weird feeling and thought to myself “I don’t like all of us on that slope at one time, I’m going to stay back”. Normally you would expose only 1 person at a time to risk from a slope, and you’d move from safe spot to safe spot, but I didn’t really see any obvious safe spots so didn’t say anything, and as I explained above, we had just decided as a group to stay close together. Like I sayed, I fucked up big time here. I moved down the slope a few feet so I could keep them all in site.

This is where things go sideways. I would estimate the time at about 2pm, but that is just a guess, really. As I come to a gentle spot on the top of the ridge above the small bowl the other 3 skiers were on, I heard an extremely loud bang from behind me… it sounded like someone fired a shot-gun from about 6 feet behind me. At this exact moment all of the snow I’m standing on is moving and cracking around me and I’m falling sideways up the slope. I yelled out something as I fell to the ground. I’m not sure how the rest of this really happened because it only took seconds, but somehow I managed to find the bed surface below the moving snow and dig into that. Partly with my skis, and also likely, partly with a ski pole I was carrying that has a pick that looks like it came off an ice axe (it’s called a “whippet”). I looked up the slope as this was happening to see debris coming down towards me, including at least one very large block, probably about the size of a small car. I ducked my shoulder, and this large block slammed into me and either went over me or bounced around me somehow, and I somehow managed to stay put by some miracle.

...cont...

[Shorty_J]

...cont...

As soon as I realized there was no more snow moving towards me from above I stood up and looked down the slope to try to see what has happening with the other 3 skiers. I saw 2 of them for sure but can’t be sure if I saw all 3 or not, they were on top of the debris pile and moving very fast in a narrow stream of debris as it funneled into a steep-walled gully and went around the corner behind a rock, at which point I lost sight of them.

As anyone who has taken an avy course knows, at this point we were one step away from the worst case scenario possible… 1 person on top, 3 caught in a slide as it heads into a terrain trap. The only way it could have been worse was if I was caught too. At this point I was very panicky, and I’m not 100% sure of everything I said as I tried to fiddle with all the buckles on the equipment on me to remove my beacon, but it was all very negative and panicky. I yelled at myself out loud 3 or 4 times to “calm down!” as I got my beacon out and switch to “receive” mode.

Normally you would make zig-zagging search patterns at 20-30m, started from the last seen point. Since I could be 100% certain I had seen all 3 people carried down the slope, I began that grid from the top of the debris. I had to ski on the debris itself with poles in one hand and my beacon in the other, since I recall realizing at the time the entire slope had not slid, and there was still a lot of snow that could come down after me if I stepped on the wrong spot. It’s actually a bit amazing to me that I had the wherewithal to have that thought in that moment. My beacon works in an analog fashion from large distances, and I eventually started to hear a couple of beeps before a distance indication came on indicating it is in digital mode. I was scanning the surface of the debris for any equipment sticking out of the snow as this can save you a lot of time in searching if one part of the person is above the surface of the snow. When I got a signal I stopped and removed my skis and followed the normal search procedure down the debris pile. I was able to pinpoint 1 beacon to with about 0.5m on the beacon, assembled my shovel and probe and got lucky by getting a probe strike on the first placement. I began digging and found the down jacket of the female skier, and tried to figure out which way she was facing so I could dig out her face to allow air in. As I uncovered her gloved hand, it was already purple in colour. I figured out which side was up and began to dig around above her shoulders. Her head was in a very awkward position tucked forward and as I uncovered her nose and mouth she was not breathing, her skin was purple, and there was a lot of blood coming from beneath her toque. I cleared the snow from in front of her nose and mouth, but quickly decided that she was most likely already dead from trauma. I made the decision at that point to abandon her and look for someone else while I still had time. Shortly after this I found her goggles on the surface of the snow and they were completely smashed in and full of blood, further supporting my theory of trauma.

I picked up my beacon to begin another search and noticed that it was not in receiving mode. The model of beacon I have has an “auto revert to send” feature that switches back in to transmit mode after 8 minutes so that if a rescuer was caught in a second slide, their beacon would eventually begin transmitting again so that another rescuer could find them (which would be impossible if the beacon stayed in receive mode). I assumed this had happened and tried to put the beacon back into search mode but nothing happened. I thought that maybe I was being panicky in how I was pushing the button, so I switched the beacon off and back on again, and it would not turn back on. At the time I thought that maybe I had damaged the beacon while digging up the first victim and had broken it, but back in the hut that night it turned back on. It is my theory at this time that the battery died in the cold air. I have previously done a test on another trip where my beacon showed over 70% battery when I left during the day, and at the end of that day showed 30-40% power remaining, only to show 70% again the next day. Also, receive mode uses up battery much faster than transmit mode. I also did a test at home today by turning the beacon on and setting to search mode and waiting to see how it changed to send mode. There was probably 15 or more seconds of very loud warning tones indicating that the beacon is about to switch back, and I’m confident I would have heard that at the time. I believe the battery died before this even happen (i.e. in less than 8 minutes).

So now I have 1 person uncovered and dead, and two people still buried and no functioning avalanche beacon. I decided to just walk down the debris pile looking for something sticking out of the snow to indicate a burial and quickly found a pair of boots just barely sticking out of the surface. I began digging but this person was buried at about a 30-40 degree angle, head down, feet up. His head was probably about 1m down and with only 1 person to dig I was not able to use the proper technique. If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, I can explain it to you in person. Suffice it to say that some of what I was shoveling was just falling back into the pit as I worked… not very efficient. I uncovered this person’s face. I’m not sure how long all of this took, but statistics show that if you have someone dug out in under 20 minutes, they’re chance of survival is pretty good. When I uncovered his face he was pale blue, but we has breathing very shallow breaths (maybe 1 every 2-3 seconds) and was unconscious… so this was likely less than 20 minutes after the slide took place. I stuck a finger in his mouth and nose to dig out any snow that might be in his airway. After making sure no snow was going to fall back over his mouth and nose, I left him as he was and went to look further down the debris pile for evidence of the 3rd skier. I walked all the way to the end of the debris (maybe another 50+ meters down the slope), and while I found both poles on the surface, they were probably 60+ meters apart and there was no part of the victim attached to them. I could find no other evidence of where to dig and probing the entire debris pile is a complete waste of time. So I gave up on the last person and went back to finish digging out the breathing victim.

He eventually regained consciousness but was very confused and groggy. I could not free his legs or one of his arms because he was strapped into his poles and skis (with ski leashes). Eventually I uncovered enough of his arm to cut his pole strap and backpack strap and get him out of the hole. He could barely stand up and was groggy and hypothermic. Again, I don’t know how long this all took, but at this point I’m guessing around 40 minutes. It then occurred to me that I could try to use his beacon to find the 3rd person. I took his beacon off him and started to search, but his beacon was an analog beacon that I am not very familiar with, and I was getting 2 beeps that I had to try to distinguish, one of which was the deceased victim who’s beacon I was not able to reach to turn off (and didn’t see the point at the time since my beacon wasn’t functioning anyway). I could not separate the two signals. I tried running back up the first victim to turn off her beacon, but it would have taken too long to dig her out enough to do this, and it had already been long enough that I was quite confident that the third victim would no longer be alive. At this time I double-check that my initial assessment of her (the first victim) was correct. I tried to dig any snow out of her mouth and nose but was unable to even get her mouth open has she was situated, and I felt what seemed to me to be a lot of broken teeth. She was still not breathing and felt confident in my decision. I decided that the un-buried and hypothermic victim was by no means out of the woods and that I should concentrate on keeping him alive. I have since been informed that the third victim was actually only about 4m from the deceased victim. While it’s a bit tough for me to hear that because I was so close, burials that close would be extremely difficult for even and experienced user of an analog beacon to sort out. There was really nothing I could do.

...cont...

[Shorty_J]

...cont...

We put every piece of clothing on the living victim we could find and gave him hot tea but he would not stop shivering and barely had control over his legs. The still-buried victim was a 30-year friend of his and he clearly wanted to find his friend. So I suggested that if he could find the location, I could dig him up. In his physical and mental state, and with the proximity of the two signals, he was unable to pinpoint a location either. I convinced him that too much time had passed and we needed to concentrate on him now. That was an extremely difficult decision for both of us to make, but I estimate that about 50+ minutes has passed by then.

I still felt like the gully was unsafe so I found a safe way for us to get out of the gully and hunker down to warm him up. Each group was carrying radios, and by pure luck it was in my pack. We were scheduled to have radio contacts at regular intervals, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, etc. Once the second victim was found alive and no sign could be found of the third victim I had tried to make a radio call out of the scheduled time (at about 2:30 +/-) and got no reply. At 3pm I was able to get a reply and informed one of the other groups of what had happened. It is very good that this happened because if I had been unable to reach them I was going to have to leave the hypothermic victim there by himself while I got to the hut as fast as possible. I dug a small pit to get out of the wind, wrapped him in a space blanket and we huddled together to try to warm him up, all the while maintaining regular radio contact with the other 2 groups. Everyone on the other end of the rescue was very calm and helpful at every stage in this process, and I am very thankful for this.

Those groups hurried back to the hut to call in Search And Rescue as fast as they could, but they were an hour away from the hut. While one person coordinated from the hut, 2 others headed out our way to help with the rescue. The weather was very bad and we thought it very unlikely that a helicopter could get into us that night, and there was nowhere for them to land near us anyway. After about an hour and a half of huddling together he was still hypothermic and suggested we try to get down ourselves in the hopes that he would heat up. So we put skis on and the victim made a heroic display of skiing as he negotiated steep tight trees in shitty snow while avoiding dangerous gullies on both sides of us. We skied all the way down to the valley bottom and met up with the 2 coming to help us. From there it was a fairly simple ski back to the hut.

As it turns out, SAR was able to get a helicopter in to the hut just as dusk was setting in and they took out the surviving victim and one other to get checked out in hospital. I stayed in the hut and got drunk. The 3 SAR members that the helicopter left behind were great to have there… they were good support and distraction.

As you might imagine, I’m having a really hard time with this. On the one hand I am haunted by images that are burned in to my brain like the sound of the crack, the snow breaking around me, the debris coming at me and hitting me, and the deceased victim’s face and all the blood. On the other hand, I have no survivor’s guilt (so far) and never been so happy to be alive in my entire life… I am extremely proud of how I handled the rescue, and 1 person is alive who would not be if I hadn’t made all of the decisions the way I did. This is a very gratifying feeling. It is often difficult for 2 people to locate and dig up 1 victim together, but being able to locate and dig up 2 people by myself in less than 20 minutes and with failing equipment is pretty amazing and I feel extremely pleased with what I was able to do in the heat of the moment.

I would like to encourage you not to hesitate to ask any question you want to of me… no holds barred. Talking about it makes me feel good. I only wanted to get this all out as a starting point first. Also, I might be missing some people from my email list, and you can send this to anyone you want to.

In the short term, I will not be doing any backcountry skiing for the rest of this year. We’ll see what next year brings, but I feel it’s pretty likely that I will not do it ever again. There’s still resort skiing and that is still fun as hell.

In the even shorter term, I have things I’m still responsible to take care of in this matter so I might not be available all the time, but if anyone wants to come by and say “hi”, or go for a walk, or go to the gym or something like that, send me a text. Also, please be a bit patient with me because sometimes it’s easy to keep my shit together and sometimes I just can’t, and I suspect it will be like that for a while. I love each and every one of you, and I can’t wait to see all of your beautiful faces very soon.

[Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer]

Glad you are OK and condolences to all others affected my this tragedy. I cannot imagine what you are going through.

In any event, thanks very much for taking the time to write this up, as it can serve as an educational and learning experience for others, as is the case in avalanche fatalities.

And despite whatever thoughts you may be thinking, you did a great job staying calm and collective in a very complex and difficult rescue scenario with three burials and one malfunctioning beacon. At the end, you saved someone's life - resulting from your eduction, experience and putting it in practice in a stressful situtation. Never forget that someone else is still with us because of your efforts.

Vibes to the victims....

[sparkletarte.]

wow. good work. big hugs to you. take care.

[Ramsey]

Well written given the circumstances fella.... A tough read for sure.... Cant imagine what you are going through.

Sounds like a pretty mean effort to get to two as quick as you did.

Vibes again to the family.

[DeathVan]

I appreciate your post and offer +vibes to everyone involved.

Thank you for your honesty and efforts.

[californiagrown]

curiously what angle slope where you on?

whose skis did the surviving victim ski back down on?

how deep was the debris pile when it stopped?

[Sutter]

That was a very real lucid account, thank you for sharing that, it was haunting for me as well and a foreboding reminder of the risks involved skiing the backcountry.

[Ski to Be]

This is extremely sobering. Thanks for posting. It sounds like you did a good job of triage with the victims. I hope that you heal fully from this.

[Mark-R]

In-tense! Very good write up and thanks for doing that. Every bit of knowledge when reading these accounts hopefully helps others.
Sounds like you managed the crisis as best you could and I do hope you find some peace with time.

[Hugh Conway]

Hope things get better for you.

[SorryBro]

Thank you for posting this and I hope as time passes you realize that you did everything you could in a bad situation. Condolences...

[wurst]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up and make it something we can all learn something from. Vibes to you and the families affected.

[snapt]

Vibes man. Doing the most good for the surviving member is all you could have done. What kind of beacon were you using?

[splat]

You did good. First by saving yourself and then saving someone else. That was a lot to deal with in the course of an hour or so. You manned up for the situation at hand and your intuitive decision-making saved two lives. If it would have been possible, I'm sure you would have saved them all, Shorty J.

[DownhillRider]

Thank you for the report, and good work on the rescue, you did all you could and saved a life as a result.

In regards to the beacon issue, what kind were you using, and has anyone researched this problem? My pieps dsp does the same thing, and to be honest it's fucking ridiculous that the manufacturers haven't at least recognized this as an issue (as far as I know.)

[Shorty_J]

curiously what angle slope where you on?

whose skis did the surviving victim ski back down on?

how deep was the debris pile when it stopped?

We were on Tom George Mtn. The aspect of the face is roughly South, but I would say there was a fairly large Easterly component to the slope that slid. It slid into a the 3rd large gully of 3 that is heading up-valley from the hut.

Slide started at about 1650m and ran to about 1400m elevation.

The survivor skied out on his own skis. Since he was wearing ski leashes, they were right next to him when I dug him out. I extracted them in case we needed them.

Debris pile depth is unknown but the gulley was quite incised. Since writing that report I have found out that the second victim was buried 2m down.

[Shorty_J]

Vibes man. Doing the most good for the surviving member is all you could have done. What kind of beacon were you using?

Mammut Barryvox 3000.

[skifishbum]

thanks for taking the time to post this.
I doubt it was easy to do.
Vibes to the friends and fam of the deceased
and vibes to you
I hope time heals the mental anguish of going through this ordeal

[Shorty_J]

Thank you for the report, and good work on the rescue, you did all you could and saved a life as a result.

In regards to the beacon issue, what kind were you using, and has anyone researched this problem? My pieps dsp does the same thing, and to be honest it's fucking ridiculous that the manufacturers haven't at least recognized this as an issue (as far as I know.)

The person who pointed out to me how low my batteries were at the end of the day, also had a Pieps (DSP, I think). I don't think the failure is actually the beacon, but rather, the batteries.

Having said that, having battery failure during a search when the unit displayed 70% at the beginning of the day was not even a remote possibility of something I'd have to deal with, in my mind.

I know manufacturers tell you to change batteries when they get to 50%, but I'm really thinking after this it should happen around 90%. Or at the very least, someone should be doing tests of this kind of situation on ALL beacons in the future. I would highly recommend this to all users until the reasons for this failure are fully understood.

I'm thinking about turning it to search and putting it out in the cold to see how long it lasts here at home. Probably not the same thing since it hasn't been transmitting all day, but who knows.

[::: :::]

Thanks for your story! Devastating & sobering to read

I hope you find some peace with this

[Shorty_J]

Other observations/thoughts that I've had that were irrelevant to that letter to my family, but will be relevant to this discussion:

1) I'm fairly confident the whippet was a HUGE part of why I didn't get dragged down with the slide. It might not be thought of as avlanche safety gear, but there's a near zero weight penalty and I think people should consider carrying one if they have access to it.
2) If we were all wearing ABS packs, 3 or possibly 4 people would have come out of that alive. There is one bag in particular whose airbag surrounds the head and could have possibly even saved the victim who died from trauma. The other victim would very likely be near the top of the debris and easily retrievable. I suppose this is a bit of a wild guess from me, but it's one of the very early thoughts I had on the subject when I thought about all of the factors. If I ever do venture out into the backcountry again, I will have one of these packs.

[pcgor]

I'm fairly confident the whippet was a HUGE part of why I didn't get dragged down with the slide.

I've never considered using a whippet because I've never been convinced that they would be all that useful in stopping a slide on a steep icy slope, but you just pointed out another scenario where they obiously are worthwhile.

I know manufacturers tell you to change batteries when they get to 50%, but I'm really thinking after this it should happen around 90%.

We were told 90% when I took Avy 1 from Three Sisters Backcountry two years ago.


Most valuable statement for me...

...any time a group is involved in a slide, it is the fault of everyone in the group...

Every time I hear something like this I learn more and grow more cautious. I hope you can take some solice in the knowledge that many will learn from your sharing and perhaps some lives will be saved as a result. Thank you.

[time2clmb]

I have not been able to find anything online about this, however my wife worked for a company that went through alot of that same beacon, and she said that they had a problem with the battery connectors(?) on a very large number of them at one point and talked me out of buying one and said there was no way she would use one.

I looked for documented problems online at the time and I do not recall ever finding anything. Google search isn't turning up any info to back this up as ever having been a problem though. It was a few years ago now, and as we all know memory fades on the details over time. I'll ask her about it tommorrow.

You kept your shit together and some one is alive that otherwise would not have been had it not been for you. Good on ya.