On January 22nd 2011, my girlfriend and I decided to hike up Cowboy Ridge at Stevens Pass. Before this trip I had not done any personal research into what avalanche conditions were like out there and was acting on assumptions and reports from friends about the weekend before. This was my first mistake. I had never really been too far up there so we were going into new territory without much prior knowledge. This was my second mistake. My third mistake was that neither of us was carrying a beacon, probe, or shovel at the time and she had never had any avalanche awareness or safety training. Despite all of this, we hiked up the cat track until we reached the end where the boot pack started and then hiked up the boot pack. When we reached the top of the boot pack, we were on top of an area which Ski Patrol informed me is called Tye Stick. When we were at the top of the boot pack we stood there and were both examining the routes that we each planned on taking. I planned to drop in between the large tan cliff (which was the farther out of the two) and the larger dark grey cliff (the closer one that we were standing on). While at the top, I was still wearing my backpack, which had my skis strapped onto it diagonally. This backpack is what saved my life. While eying my line which I knew would be an extremely difficult descent for the first section I was slowly inching myself closer to what I believed to be a stable area of snow pack on the cliff. (This was my fifth and final mistake). As I stepped one step closer to the edge, I stepped onto the unstable base of a cornice, which once I put weight onto it immediately broke off and dropped down the 30 foot cliff/unskiable chute and slid what I would assume was another 100 or so feet down the hill, I could not see the end of the slide path so I would not know. When the cornice dropped out beneath me I started to fall with it but my skis dug into the stable section of snow and my backpack straps caught me and held me up while I was able to dig my poles into the stable snow and hold myself up. Once I made sure that I was stable on the slope (still dangling over the edge by my backpack and arms) I was able to talk my girlfriend through what she needed to do to be able to help me up. I had her plant her skis as deep and as stably as she could into the snow so that I could reach them and pull myself up using them as an anchor. This worked perfectly and I was able to safely get back onto the ridge without any injury. From here we hiked back to where we could ski off of the backside and return to the base of the backside without having to hike more (our original plan was to ski down the frontside chutes). At the time I seemed completely fine and was able to get us out of there safely. Once we finally reached the main ski area and were on groomed runs again is when I realized how much I was shaking. We skied back to the main lodge and went inside for a little while. After 30 minutes of sitting in the lodge I decided to go down to ski patrol because my body had gone into shock. We had reached the mountain with our school’s ski bus around 1:15pm and I was in the aid room by 3:20. I spent the rest of the trip in the aid room until someone from the mountain drove me down to the bus at 5:45. After everything that happened I realized how many mistakes I made and how amazingly lucky I am to be alive to tell this story and I truly hope that others can learn from my mistakes, I know that I have.
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