Avy stories

[ken4ord]

I am looking for people to post there avy stories. Being new to the backcountry scene, shopping around for a tranceiver, and wanting to get out on the big stuff soon just want to get a better understanding of what I am getting into. Basically looking for food for thought. What was it really like using a tranciever, did you deal with a multipule burial situation, did CPR have to be performed, was a rescue necessary, what would you do different, what is standard protocol when there several searchers, on and on. And yes I know the best way of starting out is taking a course, which I am planning on doing, but just looking for some true stories to put things into perspective.

 

Thanx.

[cj001f]

Buy a copy of Snowy Torrents and read the incident reports at csac.org & avalanche.org

[Dave_Schuldt]

I can loan you a book.

[Mtguide]

Read "The White Death:Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone" by McKay Jenkins.

 

Also check out:

 

Accidents in North American Mountaineering-published yearly by the American Alpine Club

 

The ABC of Avalanche Safety-E.R.LaChapelle

 

Snow Sense:A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard-Fredson and Fesler

 

Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain-Bruce Tremper(excellent)

 

Avalanche Awareness:A Practical Guide to Safe Travel in Avalanche Terrain-John Moynier

 

Avalanche Safety for Climbers and Skiers-Tony Daffern

 

The Avalanche Handbook-McClung and Schaerer

 

All of the above are well worth your time if you want to have a thorough understanding of,as you say,"what you're getting into".Best of luck; be careful,be smart--and have a good time.

 

[cj001f]

The Snowy Torrents is a collection of avalanche accidents. There are Volumes 1-4 - the most recent is volume 4 (1980-86) it's available from the Colorado Geological Survey. The rest are available used.

 

Also good are:

 

Field Guide to Snow Crystals - Ed Lachapelle

 

The Secrets of the Snow - Ed Lachapelle

 

I'd have to say don't waste your money on Snow Sense. It's old, it's dated, it's below basic in it's material covered.

[iain]

Maybe I read the wrong book, but I thought Snow Sense was a great intro to backcountry snow safety. It gives good go/no-go advice w/o getting bogged down in the arcane details of snow crystals and other crap that really isn't that important to backcountry skiers being safe, yet seems to find its way into a lot of avalanche books. I think the objective "stoplight" approach Fredson/Fesler give to help take the guesswork and human factors out of decisions is perfect for those who want safety but don't need tons of unnecessary analysis. It is far, far better for overall safety info than "The Avalanche Handbook", for instance. For some reason, the latter has often been viewed as the bible, yet it actually has little to offer the backcountry traveler in comparison to its scientific background.

[ken4ord]

Thanks for the list of books to check out. I guess they will be a good addition to all the climbing books that I have.

 

So far it seems that no one on here has had experience in a real life situation. Which is a good thing, though I am interested in hearing what happened, I guess it is better that nothing happened except for pointing, turning, and smiling.

[AlpineK]

Not so Ken,

 

Back about 6 years ago two friends and I managed to get up to Fairy Meadows when some other group backed out.

 

We drove to Golden via the Idaho panhandle. At some point I managed to come down with a bad case of diarea, so I mostly remember having to stop the car every half hour or so to deal with the situation. The next day we met up with the helicopter pilot and the other group that was headed into the hut. Everyone in the other group was from the Seattle area and they all had PhD's in microbiology. Since we were all tree guys there was this undercurrent of smart guys vs the blue collar dipshits. Also there was this French Canadian guy on the trip; he doesn't figure into the story other than we all wanted to throttle him after the first 2 sentences out of his mouth, and I still wouldn't mind doing so.

 

Anyway the first day in to the hut we did some short runs around the hut, but on the second day we headed up above Freindship Col looking for rad shit to ski. There was about 8" of nice light powder on top of a slick surface of spring snow. At the col we saw this cool face on Sentinel Peak. The face looked pretty cool; 50 degree slope above a shrund. We headed up to the top of the peak. I was still feeling a little under the weather, so I was dogging it up the peak. The group of microbiologists were about 15 minutes behind us following our tracks.

 

At the summit I decided to go first to check out the slope. I made a couple turns through a rocky area at the top of the slope, and then I thought I would try and cut the slope to see what happened. I made a cut and everything looked cool, so I started to make turns. On my second turn I heard this loud crack and saw the slope start to slide. I tried to head down and to the side to get off the slab, but as I skied I could see the fracture line opening up really fast in front of me. Eventually I got pushed over by the snow so I was riding the slab head first down the slope. Instinct took over and I proceded to try and self arest. I managed to get my feet below me and then I could shove my hands through the slab and arest on the solid layer under the slab. I came to a stop and the slab took off. Since I had safety straps on my skis, I didn't loose any of my gear, so I just sat there with my feet dug in to the hill.

 

Everything got real quiet after the slide stopped then I heard my friend John yell at me from the top of the peak. He said, "Hey Kurt did you just shit your pants?" Anyway I managed to get my skis on and then we skied the stabilized slope.

 

The microbiologists wouldn't ski the slope even though it was clearly safe. I think they viewed us a potentially dangerous for the rest of the trip. We had a great time without any incidents for the rest of the trip, and we skied the face on Sentinal one more time near the end of our stay at Fairy Meadows.

 

That's my only encounter with a slide.

[vegetablebelay]

Or it could be that nobody wants to subject themselves to Monday morning quaterbacking.

[chelle]

Kurt, that is a great story. Glad it didn't turn out differently. Had your skis come off already when you tried self arresting? Is self arresting a typical response to being in an avy or was this just your mountaineering instincts kicking in? I don't know much about avalanches so these might be "dumb" questions, so don't rail me.

[ken4ord]

Thanks, AlpineK. It's funny that it was the sick guy the guy feeling under the weather was the first to hit the slope. Glad you made it through it ok. So I guess you are the only one.

[tomtom]

Avalanche Reports

[Figger_Eight]

So far it seems that no one on here has had experience in a real life situation.

 

Or they're not interested in sharing it online with a bunch of strangers.

[To_The_Top]

Yah Kurt, good story......

 

My near run-ins were not not that close......

 

One time on a slope on a traverse of a few peaks under high avi conditions a friend wanted to cross a bowl that I said no way, we can go above safely. He wouldn't hear of it and stepped off a rock solidly into onto the steep slope.....Whummmpppp!?!....hissssssssss he was stuck in a four foot crown screaming "Holy Shit!!", and I crawled down and yanked him out as the slope slid another foot. He was still shaking when we got off the mountain to the car.

 

Another time, on Granite Mtn (several years back), there were four of us, three pretty seasoned climbers and one new guy, who wanted to climb Rainier. As part of his training we went up the ridge route late winter...going over self arrest at the top, crampons, getting him familiar with the mountain. On the way up we dug a pit, and at 4200' the snow was well bonded and danger seemed low.

Up by the top there was a bowl, which was pretty steep, and he almost stepped out on it. We dug a pit and there was 9" of new snow over hoar....very bad.

So we kept to the ridge on the way down, saw a snowboarder hiking up and thought we were being careful. Near the bottom of the ridge we decided to cut down the slope and glissade the chute to the trail.

On the way down, going pretty fast glissading, and I was getting hit with snow balls....thought it was one of my friends messing with me, then I turned around and there was this wall of slow (about as fast as you can glissade) wall of snow about four feet high maybe twenty five feet wide right behind me!

I just rolled as hard as I could off to the side of the gulley, and avoided it, as it washed by for a long time.

One of my friends was standing and watching it go by him and I was yelling back up away from it....he didnt, and a second surge grabbed him by the ankles and sucked him past me (he was 200' above me before) and I was yelling at him to roll out of it, as he was on top, he replied "I'm gonna ride this one out " but as it got a bit faster, he managed to get out.

Of the two above, one got caught for a short time and the other was not in it (the new guy). We all regrouped and we were like wow! how did that happen, the new guy was like "Now I see why you guys do this that was wild!" like that happens every time you go out in the mountains. The new guy said that the snowboarder above had cut across the slope and the whole thing started from his tracks....

We all agreed once we saw that he was safe not to attack him, as we were the ones in the fall line. As we desended through the forest, the snowboarder was behind us, and never would get close to us, even when we stopped for a long time, he would too, not coming near us, but following our footsteps. At the car, we putzed around for awhile and he never did show.

 

Last year I knew of someone in the same area that was buried for 15 minutes while hiking by himself and got caught. He told the story that he cupped air as the snow stopped avalanching, and dug himself out as he had one arm that was able to punch through the top.

I'm sure there are better stories around those are mine.