39 buried in Utah Avalanche!

[snoboy]

Thirty nine Boy Scouts and their leaders were buried in a Utah Avalanche. Luckily they all survived.

 

Boy Scouts rescued from avalanche in Utah canyon

 

The Associated Press

 

Last Updated 11:30 a.m. PST Sunday, March 7, 2004

 

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A huge wall of snow collapsed and buried the entrances to a series of manmade caves where more than three dozen Boy Scouts and their leaders were sleeping during a winter survival camping trip, but everyone was rescued unharmed.

 

The scouts had carved the caves deep into the snow on a ridge in northern Utah's Logan Canyon, at an elevation of 7,400 feet.

 

"You're pretty cozy inside of them," said Randy Maurer, the father of one of the scouts. "You're completely oblivious to what's going on outside."

 

After the 39 scouts and scout leaders went to sleep Friday night, wind gusting to 64 mph piled snow into a huge cornice hanging over the slope where the scouts dug their caves.

 

The 500-foot cornice collapsed just before 4 a.m. Saturday, burying the entrances to the caves under 6 to 8 feet of snow.

 

Insulated by the thick snow around them, the scouts were unaware of the problem.

 

"It was a little bit more than what we expected to wake up to," Maurer said.

 

The avalanche was heard by a group of scout leaders who were sleeping in a nearby trailer, and they used an emergency roadside telephone to call 911.

 

"That probably made quite a bit of noise, I'm imagining," Cache County sheriff's Lt. Von Williamson said of the avalanche. "But if they would have all been in the caves, I shudder to think how long it would be before we would have heard about this."

 

Williamson said the Scout leaders who called for help knew approximately where the caves were, and emergency crews used shovels and snow probes to locate the scouts.

 

Some of the boys, ages 12 to 16, were awakened when they were jabbed by the avalanche probes the rescuers were pushing into the snow.

 

Maurer told The Salt Lake Tribune he was awakened by the sounds of the rescue effort.

 

"That was a big shock," said his son, Brock. "It was a wake-up call for sure."

 

By 7:05 a.m., everyone had been pulled from the caves uninjured.

 

"Some were pretty scared, some were only somewhat upset," Williamson said. "It seemed to depend upon the age of the kids. The older kids took it a little more in stride."

 

The scouts were on an annual excursion from the nearby Smithfield and Nibley areas of northern Utah.

 

Link to above article.

[thelawgoddess]

yikes.

[E-rock]

That's so WEIRD! Avalanche stories seem to get stranger every year.

[Dru]

...

Edited March 8, 2004 by AlpineK

[nonanon]

Must of been pretty scary for their Moms and Dad.

[mounthay]

500 ft cornice! thank god everyone came out ok...39 people is a large number of people involved in a modern avie accident.

[catbirdseat]

A well built snow cave can't be beat when there is avalanche danger. Had they been in tents it would have been a very different story. Even had the rescuers not been called, it seems likely that everone would have been able to dig themselves out on their own. That would be weird to be sleeping warm and soundly in your sleeping bag and have an avalanche probe stick you in the gut. "Hey, can't a guy get any shuteye around here?"

[cracked]

A well built snow cave can't be beat when there is avalanche danger. Had they been in tents it would have been a very different story. Even had the rescuers not been called, it seems likely that everone would have been able to dig themselves out on their own. That would be weird to be sleeping warm and soundly in your sleeping bag and have an avalanche probe stick you in the gut. "Hey, can't a guy get any shuteye around here?"

"You'll put someone's eye out with that!"

[Billygoat]

So would that go towards their "Buried Alive" badge or their "Don't Assume That Other People Know What They Are Doing" badge?!

 

Because let's face it, making snow caves under a cornice really should be avoided, espsecially for practice...

[thelawgoddess]

i got the impression the cornice was formed as they were baking cookies and sleeping.

[Billygoat]

39 people, in multiple caves getting buried under 6 to 8 feet of "accumulated" cornice still hints at poor siting for this exercise

 

But hey, I've done some pretty stupid shit myself. Just not with a bunch of other people's kids

[thelawgoddess]

hey, it was a "winter survival camping" trip. they picked the perfect spot and i'm sure they'll all get badges.

 

(on a more serious note, i know what you mean and i think they are pretty f'ing lucky.)

[Dru]

i don't believe a 500 foot cornice is possible, more like a little cornice formed and fell and 500 ft of utah pow avalanched on them from the slope above.

[cracked]

Boy Scouts scare me. And their idea of winter camping usually entails building a cave fifty feet from the car, having it collapse during the night, then spending the rest of the night in the car. Hardcore!

[thelawgoddess]

at least they're out there doing something ... and hopefully - if nothing else - they learn from it.

[Mtguide]

Boyscouts now=Mounties of the future.This is about par for the course in Boy Scout troops around the country.I had a great time in Scouts growing up,and we had a really good Scoutmaster,son of a trapper from northern Maine.But even he almost got us all killed by choosing to camp one time in a dry wash in west Texas.Overnight a heavy thunderstorm upstream sent a violent flash flood down the wash.We lost all our gear and food,but amazingly no one drowned.

 

I went to grad school at Utah State,bc skied and climbed a lot in Logan Canyon.Very,very dangerous place in winter and spring.The only son of my literature professor was killed,along with two friends, a few years after I graduated, by an immense avalanche that traveled 6 miles from the canyon rim all the way to the highway.I can't believe these Scout leaders were so stupid,especially since Utah State has an important and well-publicized avalanche research and forecast center.And Bruce Tremper,the 800 pound gorilla of avalanche research,teaches not far away at Layton and is on TV all the time with the backcountry snow forecast.

 

[Norman_Clyde]

I had the same thought about the 500 foot cornice. 500 feet wide, maybe, not 500 feet thick.

[iain]

hey now I was a boy scout and I learned a ton. mainly about what not to do. I learned don't bivy on the summit of mary's peak in the winter in the coast range. Don't posthole in snow in jeans. Don't bring a pair of spare jeans to replace the ones you got wet postholing. I learned not to through aerosol cans in the campfire. All we did was go camping all the time. I got a lot of outdoor experience that way. In short, in the group I was with, you will get a lot of outdoor experience if you stay alive.

[marylou]

You're better off in the Girl Scouts anyway. I did a ton of trips through the Girl Scouts, includng a nifty circumnav of Mount Olympus when I was about 12, didn't end up joining the Mountaineers, and didn't have to go postholing in snow in jeans. And then put on dry jeans and do it again.

 

I'm still looking for a good use for all of that training in lashing things together that I got at camp though!

[lI1|1!]

i was once skinning up to source lake and found a bunch of boy scouts and their leaders camped right in the middle of the cat track people use to ski back from the alpenthal backcountry, right below the little drop everyone flies down to maintain speed through the flat section that follows it. tents, cooking pits, semi-dormant 12 y/o's strewn everywhere. i told them they had about 20 minutes before the lifts opened.

 

i loved being in the boy scouts; i come from a family of pampered couch potato urbanites and it was the only thing that got me outside as a kid.

[Stephen_Ramsey]

Holy crap, that's a lot of buried scouts.

[cracked]

"the older ones took it in stride"

 

"Hi Mom, yeah, we're having fun. No, just the usual, melting snow, cooking breakfast, getting hit by major avalanches. What? Oh, yeah, this cornice fell down and buried us. No big deal, search and rescue came by and woke us up to let us know what happened. Pretty cool, actually. I'll call again later. Bye!"

 

[Bug]

Scouting is fun for everybody. Look at all the fun we're having. After about five years in Troop 9 in Missoula, I was ready for anything. We used to ski up to Stewart ridge (7000) and set up lean-to's in 6 feet of snow. We stacked logs crossways and built fires on top of those. We still ended up in the bottom of a smokey pit but we were warm and happy. The next day we would ski the peak (8500) and ski out. There were also some trips in the Bitterroot. We knew enough about avalanches to stay in the trees on intermediate terrain. We dug a few snow caves but they don't hold up well in front of a big roaring fire so we usually stuck with a 10x10 sheet of black plastic. We also didn't have gortex or pile. Just wool and some kind of plastic or rubber raincoat. We were lucky to have packs less than 50 lbs and that was after careful planning. It was great fun. Even without the combustibles.

[MtnHigh]

I listened to an NPR interview of one of the scouts today. He said that they purposely dug snow caves under the cornice because "that is where snow accumulates and you need deep snow to dig snow caves".

 

OK sure, snow may accumulate under a cornice, but what sensible person would camp below tons of snow that may release at any moment. WTF are scout leaders teaching these days.

Edited March 9, 2004 by MtnHigh

[iain]

Scouting is fun for everybody. Look at all the fun we're having. After about five years in Troop 9 in Missoula, I was ready for anything. We used to ski up to Stewart ridge (7000) and set up lean-to's in 6 feet of snow. We stacked logs crossways and built fires on top of those. We still ended up in the bottom of a smokey pit but we were warm and happy. The next day we would ski the peak (8500) and ski out. There were also some trips in the Bitterroot. We knew enough about avalanches to stay in the trees on intermediate terrain. We dug a few snow caves but they don't hold up well in front of a big roaring fire so we usually stuck with a 10x10 sheet of black plastic. We also didn't have gortex or pile. Just wool and some kind of plastic or rubber raincoat. We were lucky to have packs less than 50 lbs and that was after careful planning. It was great fun. Even without the combustibles.

 

Yeah! I miss those days coming back soggy and stinking of campfires after a weekend in the Cascades with my pvc rain slicker and cheapo way-to-cold bi-mart sleeping bag. loved every minute of it and learned a TON