Crystal 12/18/12

"Ed.  You can do better than that"...
Thanks for the motivation, Joe. 

I always have faith in you Ed!

Any other thoughts on this?

Awesome effort by you guys!
It looked like a hoar frost slide and that Whoomp kinda is tale tell of that...

One thing that has kinda been in my mind since the avy event is that we had a pretty good contingency of probe carrying people on hand. I would say at least 20+ probes available. There was a lot of commotion to turn off beacons or to receive and basically getting people out of the way of the people probing and digging around, yelling to turn off becons or to send.
When there was question of a second victim. It seemed to me that an organized probe line would have been faster and more effective than waiting additional time for the avy dogs to show up.
I know that the avy dogs are particularly fast at sniffing out victims. (hence the reason I put cooked bacon in my ski jacket. I call it "Avalanche Bacon"
There is a time line that another victim could suffocate and seconds count.  I really think with some quick organization we could have probed the whole area in 10mins and been done with it.
Quick decisions need to be made, 10 mins passed before patrol arrived and another 10 plus before the dogs showed up. I felt that patrol did a great job of controlling the mass, getting questions answered about what happened and if everyones partners were accounted for and organizing movement so the area was not contaminated by probing so the dogs would not get false positives. But on the other hand, the threat of more avalanching in the slide zone was minimal. So if we had a 20 person probe line we would have covered the area pretty quickly since the snow is not that deep and those seconds could have saved a life if there was another victim before the dogs showed up.
It really is interesting to weigh the options given the circumstance. I observed others who were frustrated that we were not getting a probe line going too. I have had my share of experience when the stove gets hot in the BC so this time it was interesting to be engaged while observing the nature of myself and people in crisis mode.

It seemed to me that an organized probe line would have been faster and more effective than waiting additional time for the avy dogs to show up.
I know that the avy dogs are particularly fast at sniffing out victims. (hence the reason I put cooked bacon in my ski jacket. I call it "Avalanche Bacon"

On a Gondy ride with Crystal's Avie Dog trainers last year they said the dogs were specifically trained to ignore the smells of food/bacon so as not to get distracted. Not washing your long underwear might be a better strategy.

Kim K posted that it was 5 minutes before anyone even called the ski patrol. Seems like an immediate call for reinforcements would always be a good idea.

Crystal patrol emergency # 360 663 3064, put it in your phone. Don't call 911, it takes them too long to figure out who to call.

I had a helmet cam on for the ski down through gate 4 and pretty much forgot that it was on for the "whomp" and the search. It took just over 10 minutes to find her from the time she was buried in the slide:



The probing was pretty random and I agree with Joe that an organized probe line would have been the right thing to do. Every group needs one really bossy type to organize the effort!
We were also just a group of people who skied through the gate at the same time and there were many skiers without partners so it was impossible to do a head count.

I'm kinda sad there's no mention in the media, including heads shots from crustal and the victim, that the rescue was performed by you guys. I know you didn't do it for glory, but patrol seems to be taking the credit.

Pretty impressive footage Steve!
As said before VERY IMPRESSIVE ACTION taken by you and the others around. Those BCA beacons sure throw the weird signals around, my old one did the same thing and I lost faith in it.
It's interesting to see it from your point of view as I was above you guys the searchers. Probe in hand standing around like a dork. At one point they wanted us all with probes to move forward and wait for the call to action. Then they had us all move back out of the way. In hind sight, I should have been an overbearing ass and organized a probe line instead of standing around observing everything.