Last Year's Avalanche at Crystal

[Toast]

I just noticed that the Cement Basin incident report has been posted.

 

Aside from the snow science aspects, this accident occurred in part because of failure in multiple aspects of safe backcountry travel practices. No single one of them doomed this accident to happen, but the combined effects were catastrophic.

 

Anyway, it's worth a read

[eternalX]

The slope released a 2 ft deep x 200 ft wide slide that ran about 500 ft vertical, partly burying three and totally burying one. After digging out the partly buried victims, the remaining six members of the group did a quick beacon search, locating the victim almost immediately and extracting him from the snow in approximately fifteen – twenty minutes

 

I know in the heat of the moment you aren't thinknig real clearly, but it seems like the partly buried guys are the ones that are in ok condition. Ideally, wouldn't you have one member of your team start looking for the buried guy immediately?

 

 

[Figger_Eight]

I guess it might depend on how the guys were buried...their heads might've been under the snow. Unfortunately in this accident, the guy died from suffocation - not from trauma.

[glen]

Turning off the beacons on the partial burials makes the search for the remaining person a lot, lot easier. Also, we don't know the style of burial on the partials or that they were totally extracted, or just enough to turn off their beacon and ensure they were okay (still better odds).

 

This accident hit close to home and offered me some lessons and perspective on being aware of group dynamics, bc safety and the need to be rigorous about assessing conditions and making decisions as dictated by the observations. The penalties to ourselves and those around us are simply too high to make mistakes. By all means get out there and have a blast and get some freshiez, but be aware and be willing to walk away and come back another time. Let's all play safe out there this year and try not to have a repeat of last season's numerous losses.