Phantom avy info? 04/06/11

This is really fascinating...I've never skied in this area of the Pass, though, so I'm trying to visualize the terrain...does anyone have a photograph or maybe a link to a trip report with pictures?

Thanks for sharing this Marcus. Please don't feel pressured to share more than you want. Many of us are just glad everyone is ok.

I was up there Sunday afternoon, which may have been a bad decision on my part. I'm really anxious to hear your groups decision making for comparison and to see if there were any different signs along the way...

This is really fascinating...I've never skied in this area of the Pass, though, so I'm trying to visualize the terrain...does anyone have a photograph or maybe a link to a trip report with pictures?

Here are two photos from the Volken guide, about the Phantom:

www.flickr.com/photos/nordique/5601636571/

www.flickr.com/photos/nordique/5602220626

I am also glad to hear that all in your party are alive and relatively speaking fortunate that nothing worse happened.

I think it is great that you, Marcus, are willing to share some of what you learned from this event. I think to a degree TAY can have the effect of pushing some skiers and boarders to do more really than their experience would suggest as individuals learn about the next great thrill in the backcountry. And sharing trip reports is sometimes just fluff. So, it is great when something of such value is presented as an opportunity for some of the less experienced among us to learn in a way that really comes home and to serve as an important reminder for the more experienced that it can happen anytime we let our guard down.

Fortunately, I think there is a tendency when one does report an incident for the audience to be not judgemental, but rather to just listen and learn.

I think Fresh's reference to Tremper's analogy is a valuable addition to this thread. I know from my own experience that I've had a couple of close calls that fit the Tremper model well.

I sometimes think about Tremper's confidence vs time graph in these situations. One's confidence in avalanche terrain gradually rises over time with periodic crashes when something bad happens. An avalanche ride, serious injury, death of a friend, etc.  I know in my own avy career I have made a few mistakes, had a close call or two, and probably gotten lucky. But I haven't taken a ride or been injured. I know that's no guarantee it won't happen in the future though.

Nordique's posting of the map should help those who don't know Phantom Slide. The press described it as south facing when in reality it is just slightly south of west facing. Phantom slide was created by a large avalanche in 1990 and is just opposite the main Alpental parking lot.

Thanks, Gary. I learned a lot about the recent leader ground fall at the Seattle gym from Adam and about how to avoid similar incidents in the future. Incident reports are great learning experiences.

Sobering to hear, glad everyone survived and can only wonder how many times I have been only a few feet or fractions of a PSI away from the same situation...

A question we should all ponder. Are we smart or just lucky?

This part is way more stream of consciousness and I apologize if it’s harder to read.  Just getting it out of my head.

The Slide

The crack is silent and none of us make a sound as the slab’s blocks dissolve into powder.  I slide on the surface, still in the light, trying to pound the head of my whippet into the bed surface.  I’m already moving too fast. 

I’ve forgotten my avalung!

Grab it, shove it into my mouth.  And then I’m under, tumbling in the stiff liquid foam, like rolling around in a mixing bowl of well-whipped meringue.

Anastasia is going to be so pissed at me if I die here.

What else?  Fight!  Swim for the surface, make an air pocket, stick your hand up!  It’s all coming back, but when will this slide end?

SMACK!  I’ve hit my head on something.  I’m still conscious, no pain – I’m okay.  Fight more, make an air pocket, stick your hand up!  I’ve lost my avalung.  There’s snow in my mouth.  I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.

Stick your hand up!

And I’ve stopped.  I can’t see but it’s light.  I sit up, covered only in a thin coating of fine powder.  I’m up against a big tree and I can’t breathe.  Stand up, have to cough!  Harder!  GASP!  Huge volumes, lungfuls, barrelfuls of air, a wad of snow like a tangerine, discolored from being in my throat, lying on the ground.

I can finally look around.  I see Roger.  He’s uphill about 250 feet, on the surface.  I take out my beacon and switch to receive – nothing.  Not a peep.  I’m too far even from Roger and I’ve yet to grasp how far down I’ve come from the crown.  Dan must be above me somewhere.

I try to shout to Roger, but my voice is hoarse from the snow.  He sees me. 

“Do you have Dan?”  He can’t hear me.  I try to ask him to switch his beacon, but then I see Drew way up above and he’s yelling to Roger too, so I wait.  Drew has Dan.  Thank god, okay.  Roger starts scooting down to me on his butt, unable to stand – I start climbing up to meet him.  Crap, I can barely lift my right leg!  I can stand no problem, but man is it tender.  I must have banged it on a tree and not felt it – okay, we’ll have the hands help too.  My head feels all right.  No loss of consciousness, no pain, no vision trouble.

I find one of my poles and it’s then that I realize that everything else is gone.  Both skis and my whippet have checked out – thank god the skis came off my feet.

Roger and I finally come together.  He looks good.  Good airway, no obvious trauma.  I try to switch into EMT mode as my brain is firing 1000 miles an hour.  His knees hurt – okay, we expose them and they look okay.  Tender and some bruising already, but no obvious deformity and no open injuries.  No other complaints.

Drew’s here too and he helps make Roger comfortable.  He tells me that Dan’s probably got a broken leg.  I ask him about first aid background and tell them both I’m an EMT and ski patroller, just so we all know where everyone is.  Drew offers me his skis if I think I can make it up to Dan.  I click in (Dynafit fittings on the NTN boots, thankfully) and make my way up.  Drew yells up that he’s calling 911 – good, get them moving.  It’ll take a while and we’ll need at least two litters, assuming I can walk out, which I’m quite determined to do.

Both my legs are cramping and my right leg is on fire.  Skinning on these fat, long skis on the avalanche’s bed surface is a challenge.  I finally see Dan and yell up to get his condition.  He’s pretty sure he’s broken his right femur and thinks he may have broken the tibia too.  Crap.  I try to motor, but I have only one speed.

Dan is a tough guy.  My initial exam reveals no real pain in the lower leg and, though he complains of pain in the thigh I have a hard time believing he’s broken his femur.  This is the injury that’s supposed to be the closest a man can come to the pain of childbirth – he’s barely grimacing.  But sure enough, tightly bound muscles and an obvious deformity up high prove him right.  I call the Operations Leader for the Ski Patrol Rescue Team and give him the details.  He’s just received the word from King County SAR and is working on spinning up the mission.

Dan is managing his pain well, so Doug and I try to make him a bit more comfortable and get him ready for the long wait.  Extra jackets, balaclava, space blankets, garbage bag, Ibuprofen  – he gets most of what we have, which isn’t much.  I empty my pack, trying to figure out what we need to make a traction splint.  A stout ski pole.  Leg loops cut off of the climbing harness he had with him.  A 12” sewn runner.  Three Voile straps.  The aluminum harness buckle.  That will do. 

With the traction applied, we button up Dan and he seems fairly comfortable.  I take some pictures and climb up toward the crown to see the starting zone.  Dan’s tree is about 250 feet downslope from the crown.  Roger is another 250 feet further still, and I was a couple hundred feet below him.  I realize that we’d all been filtered out by the trees and that I had no idea how far down the slide continued.

I check in on Dan as Doug returns from visiting Roger and viewing the slide path.  He’s found one of my skis and tells me that the slide ran another 800-1000 feet below where I stopped, over steeper slopes and a 50’ cliff band, before hitting the lower angle fan and coming to a stop more than 1000 vertical feet from the crown.  He also reports that Roger is in a lot of pain, so I bundle up what little I have left and head down to give him a more thorough assessment.  Dan’s break seems stable and he’s in excellent spirits, with Doug to keep him company.

When I get down to Roger I offer him my last few Ibuprofen.  I have some Immodium if things get ugly, but he turns it down.  It’s clear to me at this point that we’ve got an incredibly solid group of people.  Roger and Dan are absolute troopers and fortunate to have stable, non-life-threatening injuries.  Drew and Doug are unflappable, reflexively getting the rescue started and immediately caring for the most critical concern – imminent hypothermia.  We are going to come out of this okay, despite our mistakes.

We hunker down and wait for Search And Rescue to arrive.

A sobering story with a relatively benign outcome. Thanks for sharing Marcus.

There is more to the story. News reports said that the 911 call was around 9:30am and the evac was not completed until dark.

Yes, thanks for letting us in on what happened. How close to the treeline did the slide reach? I have often wondered if slides on those more open slopes could reach down into the trees. I do hope it isn't the Don I met and skied with recently, I am afraid it is. Let us know if you need us to look for any missing gear up there.

Sorry, I should have made this clear -- a couple of the names (Don & Lou) are made up, since I've not been able to ask them how they felt about it.  Sorry for any confusion there.

I never saw the toe of the slide, but one of our party went down there -- I'll ask him.  From what I could tell, the slide went pretty far down the lower angle slope below the cliffs, but not all the way to the treeline.  Close though -- within a couple of hundred feet and, despite the slab's thickness, it was a pretty small overall area.

I would not ask anyone to look for our missing gear -- I know I'll be heading up there once it melts down a bit to search for it.  That said, we lost a BD Kilowatt (EDIT -- might have been a Megawatt, actually) with a BD01 tele binding, a yellow Voile Insane with an NTN binding, a whippet, 3 other poles and a single Fritschi binding that ripped off the touring toe plate.

Small price to pay.

And yes, nordique, there's more to the story.  That's coming later.  The SAR response was fantastic in all respects.

Excellent accounting Marcus, thank you for posting.

Oh good. Thanks for clearing that up. He will probably wonder what that text from me was all about then.

I will keep an eye out for those things next time I get up there.

I lost a 185 Kilowatt 2 years ago, so if you can't find it and the size is right i'd be happy to help out or buy the single off you or something. I may also have a single fritchi but I think it is size XL. Let me know if I can help.

Amazing read and thank you for sharing. Pictures of the bed surface and crown will be of value to the incident report at some point.

I have some Immodium if things get ugly, but he turns it down. 

Is "Immodium" a typo, or what that changed to protect the innocent (guilty?). I am unaware of the applications of Immodium in a trauma situation (unless you are scared S***less). I always travel with some serious prescription pain killers and they have saved the day in situations similar to yours.

Ha -- no. A friend asked me that this morning. I did have Immodium and I offered it in jest to Roger -- I mentioned it in the write-up because, despite the tone of the whole affair, that's where we were at the time. Everyone in our party was just rock solid, in excellent spirits and happy to be alive. So much so that we were joking around and having as good a time as we could make of it, which made it pretty easy to deal with.

I beg to differ. Hit "ALL", start at the top, read each post and you will see there is a clear expectation for personal accountability in his decision to ski.

ACTUALLY, YOU are wrong and assuming that. I wanted to know what layers released and if it seemed obvious to Marcus in retrospect why it let go... I have ZERO interest in second guessing his risk accessment, nor do I plan to take part in any monday morning quarterbacking beyond my own internal decision making and incorporating his analysis of where the snowpack failed.

I was there that day skiing, I observed the snowpack first hand. I skied it inbounds and wanted to know ONLY what layers failed and possibly what contributed to it..  

A few weeks ago, I skied first tracks out to piss pass with another skier. It was very windscoured, and the fresh few inches had a windslab to them. The next day, someone here reported they got caught in that same area and was burried up to their waist, but was thankfully unhurt. After reading his account, I thought that maybe, had I reported the windslab layer the day before, perhaps it would have been helpful in his own risk accessment.

My reason for not posting a trip report was mostly due to my neophyte status here in comparison to some of the people here who have decades of experience traveling this sort of terrain.

I do know this for certain. I communicate and cautiously approach terrain. I try to watch for warning signs of problematic snowpack. Any person reporting release events goes into my personal risk acessment. I also use the NWAC forecast as a guide, but if I don't rely strictly on it if we get 16 inches of snow, when they made their prediction based on a forecast of 6 inches.... I know I need to question the published risk accessment.

Thanks Marcus. The story was sobering.

Glad you are ok. If you have a pair of skis, I would lend you one of my pair of NTN's to get you on the snow again..... shoot me a PM if you want..

Marcus, thanks for your offer to provide more details, and then doing so. As expected, there's much interesting, sobering, and educational info in your first two reports already, nicely written.

---

Just to clear something up, and try to end the side-argument which has been nearly de-railing this thread:

In reply #12 above, Marcus offered "Much more detail to follow."
In the next reply #13 above, I quoted his text, and stated "Looking forward to a detailed analysis / report. There's probably much to learn from it."  How could several people (specifically gravitymk, but perhaps others like jwplotz and superyeti too who are aggressively posting above) misinterpret my words to mean "posts like Amar's specifically stating that they wanted to see a report"? I said nothing like that at all. Marcus offered more details, and I said I was looking forward to reading those details. That is entirely different than me stating that I expected or wanted a report. There is almost no room for misinterpretation, and yet some did exactly that.

Then in reply #19, Marcus says flat out that "I'll have a full write-up in the next couple of days." So basically, everyone in this thread who said they looked forward to a report, or wanted to read and learn from it, was stating so in direct reply to Marcus' offer. No one was trying to ask him for a report, or pressure him in any way, or say that they expected accountability. Everyone was writing what they wrote after Marcus had voluntarily offered to provide more details and a full write-up. Maybe some people need to read threads more carefully before deciding to post misdirected replies, which reveal that they did not properly read (or misunderstood/misinterpreted) the preceding posts in the thread.

It's just like some people totally not getting Plinko's joke about Alpental in reply #14 above, and misinterpreting his words, but at least in that case the joke could only be understood if you had read another recent thread about Alpental ( this one ). But in this case, everything should have been cleared up just by reading the preceding posts in the thread, specifically those two from Marcus.

Thanks for sharing your experience in such vivid description and again really glad all made it out in relatively good shape, although bone breaks are pretty serious things. Like you Marcus in my post A Foot of Fresh Snow where I described my incident with a slide that occurred on St. Patricks Day it took me some time to figure out if I would post about it or not. A cool reminder from Passenger who I talked to on my way out of the basin helped me to think beyond my own embarrasment and I am grateful that he gave me that nudge. Writing about life and death experiences is somewhat difficult but from my personal experience it helps one in facing the aspects of doubt, fear, and the self-chastizing that follow in the mental process. The up side is enabling the spirit to remain undiminished, undaunted, stalwart and resolute in the pursuit of powder skiing.
peace

Hey TAY'ers -
I'm Lou from Markus' story, actually Drew. Don't have internet at home or I would've posted here earlier.

Analysis of what led up to the slide can go on and on. Once the slab broke out and three friends disappeared downslope with it, that all becomes instantly irrelevant. Despite mistakes, we also did a great deal right. Despite what we did right, we also were blessed with great luck and fortune.

Many people involved in accidents in the backcountry are not fortunate enough to look over immediately after the accident and see an EMT in their S&R uniform setting a femur break in a traction splint and administering medical aid to both victims. Thanks Markus! And Doug too for being calm and collected throughout - from when the slide broke to the evac to the hospital on to today. And Roj and Don for their courage, not losing their cool once while sitting through convulsions of shock in the pounding snow that fell all afternoon.

Thanks also to the greater NW backcounty community. The enthusiasm, concern, and knowledge out there is incredible. I suggest you all go skiing to reward yourselves for being great people.

Amar, while there may have been a better way for me to express myself, your interpretation of my post couldn't be further from my intent. No one, including myslef is attacking you. Please note that I amended my post to be more clear.

For what it's worth, I've felt no obligation to post and no pressure, beyond the usual curiosity. As I said, I'm doing this mostly for my benefit, but I've got no problem sharing it (and neither do the other members of my party) if it will benefit others. Appreciate all the good words, thank you.

Ha -- no. A friend asked me that this morning. I did have Immodium and I offered it in jest to Roger -- I mentioned it in the write-up because, despite the tone of the whole affair, that's where we were at the time. Everyone in our party was just rock solid, in excellent spirits and happy to be alive. So much so that we were joking around and having as good a time as we could make of it, which made it pretty easy to deal with.

Tank of gas to get to Alpental - $40, bottle of Immodium - $7.95, sharing it with friends after an avalanche - priceless!

Still healing from a broken rib... it only hurts when I laugh. Thanks again Marcus, that part of the story is truly inspiring.

Thanks for posting your story Marcus. I'm glad everyone is out safely and healing up. I'm impressed that you're willing to work through your memories of the incident in such a public way. That's not easy.

Thanks, Marcus, for sharing your experience with the TAY community.  Fortunately it was not more tragic.  I have found benefits for me from reading it.  It has initiated a behavior in me that Tremper describes in his book where my confidence for assessing hazard (including human factors) has been shaken, and I am taking actions (such as re-reading his book) to strengthen my confidence.

Thanks, Marcus!

There is plenty to learn from this incident.

Some may question the decisions that led up to it. I have survived being 18 and stupid over multiple decades, so even though I may learn from the sequence of events, I have no desire to judge.

It is obvious that everyone kept their wits in the aftermath. If you haven't been there, you can only wonder if you will be up to it.

What impresses me most, only became apparent after Marcus clarified the Imodium context. Keeping a sense of humor when there is still a lot of hard work and suffering between current reality and the certainty of survival is a triumph of spirit over adversity. To me, it illustrates the fierce determination to not just survive but to also remain whole. We are humbled by the power of nature, but even humble, we can remain mighty.

My first thought when this hit me was: "These are guys I'd like to ski with". Thanks for the reality check and for the inspiration.

Marcus - what struck me from your story is that you guys actually stocked, carried, and knew how to use the safety gear and first aid to treat an injury. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't -- especially when headed out on a "quick" dawn patrol on familiar ground. Thanks for the great reminder to restock my first aid and discuss first aid among the group I am with before heading out to ensure a decent supply. And given that a slide can steal some of your gear, redundant first aid isn't a bad thing either.

Here are a few of my pictures of the avy scene.


Hello everyone, I’m “Don” from Marcus’s post, with the broken femur.  My real name is Dan. Sorry to be party to the name confusion earlier…   I read the whole thread, and feel compelled to add my $.02, so I just now registered on TAY for the first time. I’ll try not to make this too verbose (though I’m sure I’ll fail at that) and I don’t want to repeat too much of what others have said.

My first goal is mostly to add to the usefulness of our experience in reducing the likelihood or severity of future avalanche incidents.  I acknowledge and appreciate those who have stated that they don’t “expect” a report from us, but at the same time I know how much I enjoy reading the AAC’s Accidents in N. American Mountaineering each year, hoping I can glean some tidbit from someone else’s experience that might save lives for me or my friends in the future.  My secondary goal is to get my own memories down before they fade from my head.

My point of view comes as someone who is probably less experienced with explicit backcountry skiing than any of the other members of the team, but nonetheless my experience is pretty deep.  I have lift-skied at Crystal all my life, and my experiences with avalanches began when I was 10 or so, being swept away in a slide in the Crystal slackcountry, saving myself from a likely very early grave by grabbing an opportune tree as I went by it and letting the snow slide under me.  I generally have gotten about 5 to 10 true backcountry days a season for the past 15 years or so.  In recent years, the Slot Couloir has been my most common objective, and I had done it most recently in late February, so I was quite familiar with the terrain.

Roger, on the other hand, a friend of mine for many years, has probably been up that side of Snoqualmie Mt. over 100 times – I’m guessing not many people know it better than he does. I didn’t know Marcus, Drew, or Doug well before our trip, but based on our conversations on the drive & approach it seems all of them make backcountry skiing their primary recreational activity in the winter.  I felt I had the least experience, and I had at least a slight feeling of deferring to my teammates’ expertise and judgment on this trip.

Although we didn’t discuss it much specifically, I’m sure we all knew the NWAC report for the day. We did discuss the obvious slow trailbreaking due to deep snow, and we swapped leads rather than letting Roger punch it the whole way like he usually does.  The increasing risk of avalanche danger was certainly on my mind, but in the trees lower down the layers did seem fairly well bonded in most places; even on the steep slopes around the cliff bands our switchbacks did not cause significant sluffs. As we got higher up into the sparser trees, we started spreading ourselves out and paying close attention to not skiing underneath each other.  There were signs that the snowpack was becoming more unstable up higher, but there were still no whumpfing or shooting cracks.  Our switchbacks did not slip out from under us.

We did not dig a pit.  We limited our assessment to examining layers exposed by steep switchbacking in a few spots and just the general feel of the snow & terrain. I’m not aware that this was a conscious decision to not do a more rigorous assessment.  Roger noted aloud at one point that our main concern would be the new snow that had fallen since the weekend. There was a slightly crusty layer about 12”-18” down representing the surface from the weekend.  I did notice (I think we all did) that the wind was blowing pretty hard up at the ridge as soon as it came into view, and certainly the possibility of wind loading there entered my mind a least for a moment. 

We converged at the entrance to the snot couloir to check it out. By this time I think we were all on the same page that skiing anything on the N side of the mountain would be a bad idea, from both a time and a danger perspective.  Nonetheless, we continued up to take a look at the slot in this order: Roger, Marcus, Dan, Drew, Doug.  We weren’t talking a lot at this point, but Roger pointed out areas to avoid on our descent because of their propensity to slide, as Marcus noted. Roger pushed a track up and climber’s right, around a convex minor ridge where there was a small group of trees. 

This is where we came upon the feature that eventually slid, a slightly horizontally concave and more open slope about 60 ft. wide. There is a minor rock buttress that comes down from the summit ridge on the far side of the open slope; all skin tracks up to the entrance of the slot must stay to climber’s left of this buttress.  There are a few trees around the base of the rock buttress, I believe that’s what Marcus referred to as the “few thick trees”.

He continued past the trees (Marcus’s “pocket of trees”) into the open slope. I watched Marcus wait at the small group of trees before the slope as I approached him.  When Roger reached the other side of the slope, near the base of the rock buttress, he made a switchback. Marcus took this opportunity to punch across the slope and joined Roger at the switchback as I took my turn waiting at the trees. I remember being aware that this was probably the most dangerous terrain we’d been on thus far, but I don’t remember being really worried.  When Marcus got to the switchback, Roger began pushing the next leg climber’s left, and I had a decision to make… wait for him to continue and eventually be breaking trail directly above me (above the trees), or punch it myself and get to the switchback before Roger got too far from it.  I deliberately chose the latter option, thinking that the switchback was close enough to the rock and trees to be safe.  And I made it.  The 3 of us were bunched up pretty close to the switchback, me on the downhill side, Marcus right above me on the uphill side, and Roger breaking trail about 20 feet up and left of us.  At that point, apparently Roger was on some wind-loaded snow that was much less stable, and it seems his weight caused a fracture about 5 -15 feet above him.  I did not see the fracture myself, just heard about it later from Marcus and Roger.  My first indication of a problem was the collapse of the upper part of the skin track at the switchback, that triangle wedge of snow that Marcus was on top of, onto the lower part, right where I was.  I dove up toward Marcus, toward what I thought was the top edge of the avalanche in hopes it would fall out below me (as I have successfully done on a couple other occasions), but the real fracture line was up a little higher, out of reach.

As this is the end of the portion of our day where we could have prevented being involved in an avalanche, I’ll pause here for a little reflection on our mistakes:

1. There will be some people who would say we had already made our worst decision by skinning up that side of Snoqualmie Mt. that morning at all.  Obviously if we’d bailed that early, it wouldn’t have happened.  I’m not in that camp though. I feel strongly that the avalanche conditions on most of that side of the mountain at that time were not severe enough for me to feel like I made the wrong decision to continue. Even after my experience, I would make that same choice again in identical conditions.
2. Once we made the decision that we weren’t going to ski the N side of the mountain, we should have focused only on the quality and safety of our run back down to the parking lot.  There was no real reason to continue up to the slot entrance, just our curiosity of how it was looking.
3. I think we were aware that the danger was increasing, but we didn’t alter our behavior significantly. We continued breaking trail along the normal path, relying mainly on our intentional spacing and the routefinding decisions of the leader.  That is not intended to put negative judgment on Roger for his routefinding decisions, but rather to claim responsibility for them myself because of my mental state. Speaking for myself, I was not opening my mind and being mentally proactive about assessing the whole situation. My self-image of being slightly less experienced than the others was a factor here.  If I had been leading others who were less experienced than me, I would have been thinking much more actively.
4. We should have been more rigorous about our snowpack assessment as it changed higher up.  Digging a pit would have alerted us more to the wind loading, and it also would have given us time to stop, think and discuss our decisions as a group.
5. Personally, I made an incorrect assumption that the far side of the slope by the trees & rock was safe from a fracture line from above.  I suspect Marcus made the same assumption.  If Marcus and I had not made this misinterpretation, we would have waited at the small group of trees until Roger was either completely back in safe territory, or, more likely, watched him succumb alone to the slide.  Still not great for Roger, but definitely a better outcome for the team as a whole.

Back to the story. It seemed I was separated from Marcus fairly quickly; I knew I was going for a ride, but wasn’t aware that Roger or Marcus had been caught yet.  I got my avalung in my mouth and stayed mostly near the surface for quite a while. Then it sped up and I got turned under, but felt I still had enough control to influence my position within the slide a little. I was actually thinking I was getting the hang of riding it out, just wondering how long I’d have to maintain, knowing the important thing would be my position when things came to a halt.  But then, with a surprisingly violent blow, I came to a halt even though the avalanche didn’t. I remember a quick chain of thoughts that crossed my mind in the next few seconds.  First, OW! Second, annoyance at the sudden disruption of my perceived avalanche flow management.  Third, profound relief that my ride in the avalanche was actually over and even though I knew I was at the very least badly bruised, everything would be fine for me.  I had hit the tree with my right quadricep only.  As I was soon to discover, I had instantly broken my femur, but then the continuing avalanche pinned my leg against the very large tree, which supported it and kept it from moving around more. My upper body was hanging around the left side of the tree, which created a large airhole in the lee of the tree.  All I had to do was hang out and wait for everything to stop.  When it did, I was mostly exposed. Drew came by first, with his beacon in search mode, and he was saying to turn off other beacons, and I assumed he meant me, so it wouldn’t interfere with his searching.  I said “I can do that…” and started struggling to get to my beacon, but it was buried under several layers of clothing and I gave up trying to do that pretty quickly.  I did yell that I very well could have broken my leg, but at that time I wasn’t sure; it was only based on how hard I had hit.  Drew kept going by to look for Marcus and Roger.

Soon, I got my left leg around underneath me to support my weight.  It was then that I realized my still-pinned right leg was not rotating the way it should when I twisted my hip around, and the muscles felt weird.  Not much pain, but then I knew for sure it was broken, and I better not move around much because there were probably sharp pieces of bone sticking around in there ready to tear things apart. Doug came by shortly thereafter, and I told him I needed my leg dug out and I asked if everyone was accounted for. Drew yelled up that he had seen that Roger and Marcus were on the surface.  Doug then proceeded to dig my leg out, and carefully set me down next to the tree.  I could go into more detail about the following events, but I think Marcus covered most of that well enough.

When I go into the mountains, I always go with the expectation that I and my team are completely responsible for ourselves.  Many places I have gone, that is totally true – if something had gone wrong, we never would have been rescued.  On that note, I’m truly grateful for the expertise of our own team.  Marcus in particular was invaluable, with his ability to set up my traction splint and many other things.  Drew and Doug used their experience to our advantage also – Doug hung out with me the longest, and his amazing attitude and quick thinking kept me going.  I can think of very little we could have done better as a team after the slide occurred.

Here is where I express my eternal gratitude to the parties involved in our rescue.  I am very aware that when we subjected ourselves to our avalanche, we were risking not only our lives, but the lives of our rescuers.  Nonetheless, the response was without hesitation and massive.  Seattle and Everett Mt. Rescue, King County, Bellevue Fire Dept., and others meshed their services seamlessly from my perspective.   It’s an incredible network we have here in the PNW.  Thanks guys so so very much!  I would love to name everyone I met by name, but there were so many and I’d be afraid of missing someone important I’m not great with names anyway!

However, when we can have an accident like this one and be rescued as quickly and professionally as we were, it makes it more difficult to maintain the correct attitude.  I would like to urge everyone to strive to keep it clear in your minds whenever you go out that you are on your own, it’s your responsibility to make smart decisions, and only when everything breaks down, you can hope (not expect) that you can be lucky enough to get a rescue like ours.

Things are going well for me; got my titanium rod installed, and now I’m home sitting on my couch – all indications are that I’ll have a speedy recovery, for which I’m very thankful.  Roger will have a rougher go at it, he’ll probably be in a wheelchair for a couple months at least.  We’re all here for you, Roger!  I’m sure next year you’ll be breaking trail for us up to the slot again!

I welcome any constructive comments.  Please avoid flames. They do no one any good.

Dan

Thanks for the pictures Dan, I'm sure that's what a lot of folk were looking for.

Very informative write up, vivid, honest and humble. Although admitting you were the least experienced in the group, I don't think your experience is beginner or novice by any means - maybe just not "current" to use a piloting term. In many other groups you could have been the one others were turning too, in this case you were with a group who just happened to have much more experience that average - a good thing!

I am also sure that your intent for posting this will be met - that those reading will take a step back and look at thier own groups in terms of communication, travel choices, first aid equipment/training etc. I've already received an email from one of my BC partners sent to our dawn patrol group as a direct result of this avalanche thread.

Heal up quickly and thanks for the posting.

Great write up Dan, thanks for adding it.

Thanks also for correcting my impressions re: that last skin track. You're 100% right that I felt that "island" was a safe spot and it makes sense now that you were trying to accomplish the same thing I was in getting across to it -- we both underestimated the capacity for propagation of the slab in that area, clearly.

So glad that you're doing well and that you weren't more seriously injured. I still can't believe you'd broken your femur, given how stoic you were with the pain.