Connor Ryan's new Avalanche video

[eSock]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIgjby9oCI

brutal, beautiful, so much footage to show how it all went down. good wake up call.

[tang]

Very well done, and yes good early season watch to get in right mindset. Thanks for posting

[Trace Hardslab]

Glad ASF is still with us. Thanksgiving.

Before the first skier dropped in, did you guys kick or trundle any cornice?

[ASmileyFace]

Glad ASF is still with us. Thanksgiving.

Before the first skier dropped in, did you guys kick or trundle any cornice?

Sorry for the delayed reply. It’s been a busy week with the release of the film!

We did not cut a cornice onto the face before we dropped due to a few factors, though it would have likely helped.

1. We were filming and snow quality and aesthetic was a factor.
2. Nothing we had seen in the past ~week of skiing had indicated that a deeper, more stubborn wind slab had formed. The wind direction had changed over night with the new snow and loaded the upper panel when we thought it was more likely to be stripped than anything else.
3. It was so cold I don’t believe I could have got the cornice to go without a rutschblock cord or something similar.
4. My personal familiarity with “fresh” snow on lines this steep was limited. I’d skied stuff like this before in the backcountry(40-50 degrees), but rarely with fresh snow. Usually in a corn cycle.

Happy to answer anymore questions folks have if they want.

[muted reborn]

holy fuck, your leg!

glad you are still here.

[cravenmorhead]

I was wondering if you could speak to the thought process of sticking with your original drop-in point and not moving over to directly drop onto the bed surface.

[RegCT]

I was wondering if you could speak to the thought process of sticking with your original drop-in point and not moving over to directly drop onto the bed surface.

Been waiting for this question to come up. Wasn't there, so not passing judgement. Just curious as to the thought process behind that decision.

[ASmileyFace]

I was wondering if you could speak to the thought process of sticking with your original drop-in point and not moving over to directly drop onto the bed surface.

There were a few factors that led me to stick with the original drop point:

1. I was already in position with skis on and Connor had expressed that he was spooked, injured and in a precarious situation so we felt as if responding quickly was important. I discussed moving to his drop point with skier 3 but quickly decided that I thought I could make the drop in safely and trigger a small slide at my feet to reduce the danger to him and get to his skis quickly to help.
2. I did not watch Connor ski because we had dropped back behind the ridge for filming purposes. So, I was unaware of how his fall occurred and what his avalanche looked like. I only caught the sluff below the cliffs and based on that it reinforced my feelings about the face up top being "easier" to mitigate
3. I really thought the snow would just point release underfoot, like I had seen a lot over the past 3/4 ski days the previous week. We had seen lots of hyper reactive tiny windslab in the past few days and I thought this was going to be similar. More stubborn, deeper windslab had not been a widespread problem for a long time and reports of windslab issues were limited in the days leading up to the accident (there was an unreported human triggered slide that happened two days previously that was a similar in many ways to mine, but the parties did not report it due to social pressure).

I could write a dissertation on the mistake we made this day, but to keep it simple my decision making process on the summit after Connor had dropped was flawed and based off information that was incomplete at best and full of hubris at worst. The snowpack situation that day was significantly different than the previous week+ and I failed to take into account those differences when making my decisions. The exposure, steepness, prominence of King Salomon and change in wind direction all played a factor in that face loading up the way it did. I should have chosen a different path into the line given the information we had, but I did not because I thought I could mitigate it and I wanted to help Connor as quickly as possible. One thing I mentioned in the San Juan Snowcast that we did last April that I keep thinking about, is when something completely unexpected happens on a ski tour (big or small) you need to take a second to reevaluate before acting, I did not and nearly paid the ultimate price.

Edit: PS, I appreciate the questions and am willing to engage in good faith about this with anyone. If I was in someone else's shoes I would have a lot of questions about our process as well. One of the best things I can hope to come from this is a discussion about the hard parts, the mistakes and what we can learn. I never considered myself to be an avalanche expert and certainly do not now, but I hope some of the perspective I have gained from this can stir conversation.

[cravenmorhead]

Super helpful, thanks for breaking down the thought process.

[garyfromterrace]

Holy shit. Thanks Asmileyface. Thanks for posting, for answering questions, for being willing to relive what had to be a pretty damn traumatic (obviously physically, but certainly mentally) incident. I was definitely wondering about your choice to drop where you did as opposed to skiing the bed surface, and appreciate your honest and forthcoming response to the question. Hope you're doing OK these days!

edit, just to add I'm very very happy you're here to tell us about this and even more stoked you're back on sticks

[kw_cap]

Yeah, thanks for sharing your story and building a conversation, really appreciate that. I hope you get some nice turns in this winter

[goldenboy]

Smiley- Curious how far your group moved you before SAR reached you, and also if SAR completely repackaged you once they reached you. There's a rescue sled thread in tech talk that got me wondering. I think you mentioned something about it somewhere, but I can't remember.

Hope to meet up sometime for a beer or some turns when the better half is working at SAS

[ASmileyFace]

Smiley- Curious how far your group moved you before SAR reached you, and also if SAR completely repackaged you once they reached you. There's a rescue sled thread in tech talk that got me wondering. I think you mentioned something about it somewhere, but I can't remember.

Hope to meet up sometime for a beer or some turns when the better half is working at SAS

We were able to move ~900' down the line with the rescue sled we had (made by Sew Alpine). I think we found the limit of what is really possible in a recreational level sled. It's rare to get to practice with one in a 30+ degree pitch with avalanche debris all around you. With that said, getting down the liner as far as we did, made big differences in how SAR approached us. They were considering coming over the top and potentially long lining me out when the call came in. Known we were moving downhill changed their plan and they came up from the base. They repacked me in a SKED, and lowered me the rest of the way to a waiting FFL at the base of the line. Moving downhill as quickly as we did potentially saved my leg, because recuse times were drastically reduced from if we had stayed put ~1600' down.

Hit me up when you are in town, I would love to meet up.