Phantom avy info? 04/06/11

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.