glen Posted November 24, 2003 Posted November 24, 2003 It's a monday and a bit slow in the brain dept. Anybody have any good close call stories out there for entertainment and maybe something we should avoid ourselves. I guess my only close call isn't really that bad. I was heading down a short chute which (though difficult to tell from the top) had been heavily windloaded. About half way down I noticed a thin crack that had started opening up, but no sound or whumping. Good terrain trap at the bottom for a nice, deep burial. Made it out and it didn't slide, though I found out later that someone had been buried in a slide out of a chute 50m to the W an hour or so earlier in the day (they ended up okay). No harm, no penalty, but certainly gave me the heebie jeebies. It was certainly good for resetting the judgement meter back to careful and conservative. Anybody out there have any good stories of close calls? Quote
sobo Posted November 24, 2003 Posted November 24, 2003 (edited) Rode a column from about 30 feet up almost all the way to the ground at Vantage about 12 or 13 years ago. Jumped off a la Superman-style swan dive to the talus before the big piece hit. It rolled behind me, chopping the rope about 3 feet from my harness. Partner said it was as big as a VW bug. Rolled over my fleece jacket and turned it into a mass of fused/melted plastic. Bill Robins and Paul Certa were on an adjacent climb. Bill was purported to have commented, "OMG, we finally killed somebody!" before the dust cloud cleared. Needless to say, they were both shocked and pleased to see me stand up and walk out of the debris. All I got was a full-body left-side strawberry, an elbow as big as a softball, and a severely bruised lead-head. Sat most of the rest of the day out, and "got back on the horse" at the end of the day on some 5.7 that ended up scaring the shit out of this 5.10c (then) climber. Haven't had a lot of use for Vantage since then. I just noticed that this is in the "freshiezone" forum. Perhaps this belongs in another forum... Edited November 24, 2003 by sobo Quote
j_b Posted November 24, 2003 Posted November 24, 2003 (edited) i triggered a 2 foot slab in the selkirks a few years ago. i slowed down and turned just as i crested a steep convex slope (short steep drop then ~35 deg) to give myself the time to inspect the best descent line (something i do instuitively) and the slab sympathetically released a few feet in front of my skis. i ground to a halt and saw the avalanche propagate ~100 yards on either side of me. it stopped ~300 yards downslope in timber. it was a class 2-3 (2.5). i have released smaller loose snow avalanches before (in gullies in such) but that was a first (and hopefully a last). i suspect it's not too bad in 20+ years of backcountry skiing. that day i learned that not charging straight over steeper convexities in the terrain was a good thing for one more reason than i initially thought. btw sobo, your 'incident' is quite something. Edited November 24, 2003 by j_b Quote
dberdinka Posted November 24, 2003 Posted November 24, 2003 Skiing down the White Salmon Glacier in February. We followed the best snow by staying close to the Northwest Rib. As we continued below the base of the rib we found ourselves below the Hanging Glacier. Dropping down a little chute I got cliffed out. I hollered up to my friends who started a long traverse torwards the ski area. I considered traversing 100 feet east into an enormous cone of avalanche debris (literally hundreds of feet high) instead I popped my skis off and decided to retrace my descent. I still clearly remember hearing the tinkle of small ice chunks followed by an enormous CRACK! Looking straight up above me (like tilt your neck and eyes back) this wave of snow is pouring off the top of the Hanging Glacier, hitting a wall of rock on the northwest rib, deflecting back in my direction, turning in to this churning cloud. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The last I looked it's hitting the snow slopes I'm on below the rock cliff the Hanging Glacier sits on. It enormous. I'm standing below a little projection of rock. I bury my skis in the snow, then my body and face. I close my eyes. What I really remember is the sound, so incredibly loud. And it just gets louder and louder and louder. Suddenly it gets dark and I'm being pounded into the snow by a malestroum of wind. This goes on, I don't know, for a while. I had this incredible sense of not really being alive, and not really being dead. Just waiting for whatever eventuality to occur. Hard to explain, guess you had to be there. The noise begins to diminish, soon it's gone. All thats left is a powder cloud hanging over the valley. I claw my way up the gully, adrenaline now coursing through me, fumble with the binding cables and get the hell out of there. The debris field in the white salmon drainage was up to 20' deep and at least a 1000' long. It all came down less than a 100' to my side. What I felt was the associated powder cloud that came thundering over the rock knob I was hiding behind and pounded me from above. My friends thought I was dead, ski patrol (who were watching us) though we were dead. I don't ski below hanging glaciers anymore. Quote
sobo Posted November 25, 2003 Posted November 25, 2003 Helluva story. Goes well with your autosig... Quote
dberdinka Posted November 25, 2003 Posted November 25, 2003 sobo said: Helluva story. Goes well with your autosig... I'll say the same about yours! I don't climb at Vantage anymore either! Quote
kailas Posted November 30, 2003 Posted November 30, 2003 It was a beautiful March day I was skiing with my buddy Brian, whom I'd skied out of bounds with for many years. He wanted to step out of the ski area boundry for a run down an east facing slope called west willows, I wasn't so sure because it had gotten warmer since we last skied it, the week before. He talked me into it none the less. I went first making a few turns heading to the left and stopped above a group of stubby pine trees, with the intention of taking a few photos of Brian as he skied down past me. I had him through my view finder, when I heard what sounded like an F-16 flying right above my head. I looked up and saw nothing, then looked back at Brian and off to his left the slope was breaking away into an avalanche. My heart skipped a beat as I yelled 'avalanche'! He immediatly turned left toward me and as he did so the area he was just skiing on slid away, in fact at one point the tails of his skis were in mid air! Good thing I had stopped above some tight stubby trees because that was the only area that didn't slide down 2000 yds to th bottom of the valley in a hugh roiling cloud of snow. We looked back at where we had just skied, there was an eight foot fracture down to the ground, a slab avalanche. My legs were shaking uncontrollable, after a few mintues had passed, as we traversed a few yards and dropped down on to the now bare slope where we hiked back to the top of the ridge and into the ski area, thankful that we only got a scare, especially Brian. I learnt a lesson here, listen to your instincts not to people who don't neccessarily have a lot of b/c experience Quote
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