Tunnel Creek - the TAKE AWAY

Some of my regular ski partners and I occasionally give back to the sport by leading a mounties trip for folks just getting into the backcountry.

During such a trip yesterday one participant commented that his spouse, after just reading about Tunnel Creek, was extremely surprised and worried that he was, nonetheless, still planning on going backcountry skiing with a group of people… especially folks he didn’t even know; while she was actually considering selling recently purchased, yet to be utilized, backcountry ski gear.

It got me to thinking about how varied the “take aways” must be for the readers of Snow Fall – The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, by John Branch .

Branch did an exceptional job in chronicling this disaster. It appeared to me like he reported the facts of the event and the behaviors of the participants about as thoroughly as could be done. Just the facts – no finger pointing; no judgment; just professional, masterful reporting. He did his job and I think he did it well.

But here’s the problem with “just the facts”: What’s the take away?

Branch reported an event masterfully. It was not an educational piece.
Yet every single person that reads the piece will likely make their own assumptions as to the cause of this tragic, unnecessary and completely avoidable death of three exceptionally talented people in the prime of their life.

Those that know nothing of snow science and avalanche avoidance might very well assume that the event was an unforeseeable act-of-god. Just the luck of the draw… something that anyone ventures out to the backcountry in search or wild snow just has to accept. It just must be the risk they have to take. After all, the participants of this tragedy were the crème-da-la-crème, the best of the best. If it can happen to them it can happen to anyone, right?

On the other hand, a reader well trained, experienced and knowledgeable in snow science and avalanche avoidance might think: Wow. I got it.
I see how these talented people got caught up in the excitement and testosterone of that exceptionally talented, knowledgeable and charismatic trip promoter. I might have been lulled into doing the same… after all, he knew that line better than all the others. But not now. I got it. I’m going to make my own decisions based on facts and people the way I’ve been trained. I will not be caught in that same trap, not now.

So the TAKE AWAY of each reader will be (is) probably somewhere between those two extremes, depending on their experience and knowledge in the subject activity.

I think we owe our non-backcountry friends and loved ones that have read Branch’s piece, what we are trained to understand; what our Take Away is to this tragedy. That our Take Away will likely make us safer winter backcountry travelers. And if they worry for our longevity, they should understand that whether we live or die from an avalanche in the backcountry is far more controllable than the “Luck of the Draw”.

Completely agree.

My initial reading of the tunnel creek article was that it was a well researched and touching story, but didn't have any nail it was really hitting home. This bothered me at first, but the more I've considered and discussed the article the more I like the lack of finger pointing and conclusion.

The problem, as you describe, is that many people I know that don't bc ski read the article. Their conclusions tend to be: that's a dangerous sport and even the best/experienced are dying, so why do people do it? My sister-in-law, whom is not a skier, actually breaks down in tears and can't/won't discuss the article because she's worried about us all meeting the same fate. That's certainly an extreme, and it would be nice if somehow the article could have provided a bit more closure for the non-skier.

I'm always afraid of my own judgment, especially since I tend to be the leader and therefore a bit more "responsible" for the outcome of the day. There's a fine line between being the reassuring charismatic leader and being the dominant ears closed leader. The group dynamics were very well documented and pretty interesting in retrospect.

I think the take away is going to vary a lot based on our personal risk tolerances. On a day with that much new I typically avoid a big open slope like tunnel creek. I don't have to wonder about that too much since I skied Yodelin the day before this tragedy for the very reason that it had mellower terrain. That doesn't mean it was risk free but it was lower risk. I don't know that I could convey that to a non-skier effectively enough for them to see the difference though. I also don't think it necessarily makes me any better than the people who chose to ski tunnel creek that day mainly because they seemed much more comfortable with higher risk but also because I can easily think back to days where I have blurred the lines on safety myself.

For someone with lower risk tolerance such as myself I think the incident at Mt. Snoq a year or so ago offers a better take away. Although I like to think I wouldn't have gone up there on a day like they did I do have to realize that I have been above treeline on that slope on days where I wasn't 100 percent sure of stability. My risk tolerances could have exposed me to something like happened to them.

My main take away from the tunnel creek incident is what a huge loss can be created by some of these decisions we make. If having the people in my life that have even lower risks tolerances than I do question my sanity from time to time and make me reflect a bit more then I am OK with that. It is annoying sometimes though.

One of my takeaways is that I want to continue skiing in groups where stopping to talk about what's next is not only OK, it is good, and where people who say "I'm not comfortable with doing that" will feel supported even if they are going against the trend of the group. And there are times when it's important to stop the flow and invite discussion to make this happen - the natural course of events will otherwise tend to lead all the excited folks onward w/o discussion.

One haunting aspect of the Tunnel Creek story was how little discussion there appeared to have been about what lay before the crew, and how they'd manage themselves through it. I know my own crew has at times been a bit too close to that group dynamic, particularly when the "familiarity heuristic" was strong; my takeaway is to watch more carefully for that. If that makes me/us annoying weenies to ski with in the eyes of some, so be it.

Another takeaway for me is that I would prefer to avoid what the article describes as the "cultural shift" toward "farther, faster, bigger." As RonL aptly observes, that likely puts me at a different spot on the risk tolerance spectrum than others, and I don't mean to judge others who knowingly accept higher levels of risk. So I, for instance, almost never ski a big, open, terrain-trapped slope like that in deep powder conditions. I feel more comfortable in mid-winter on runs that have lots of breaks in the pitch to help reduce the chance of a long slide. But I'm not fool enough to think that I've somehow managed to reduce the risk to near-zero while still enjoying untracked powder turns. There are people who make choices aimed at managing risk even lower than I do, and people who choose to accept higher risk. My point is just that I would prefer to avoid grabbing the next bar of the risk ladder just because it's there and the other kids are grabbing it.

By the way, I thought that this was a fantastic article - I respect the author's choice to try as best he could to present what the folks involved said versus providing an analysis from an external POV. While there was perhaps no clear takeaway, I think the article nonetheless did a much higher service to the cause of sidecountry safety than those articles we sometimes see that say something along the lines of "he knew what he was doing and knew the risks well and died doing something he loved" with absolutely no more insight into, say, what the avalanche forecast was for the day, what the local conditions looked like, etc. I've seen variations on that them more than once in the local media, and it has always frustrated me as a missed opportunity.

three non-leadership points

1. Lift access usually means you haven't been looking hard at the snowpack on your skinning assent

2. Terrain matters and a slide gully is a slide gully. Watch your risks above dangerous terrain

www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/acci...cident_2-19-2012.pdf

3. It was clearly a weekend to be cautious. The avi report for the weekend was considerable to high. We decided the snow wasn't good enough and the danger too high to go out that weekend. [We actually ended up trying to go track skiing that day on snoqualmie. There was a 5 to 6 degree spike in temperature that morning from below freezing to above, although the temperature recordings in the NWAC report don't show that for stevens]

... whether we live or die from an avalanche in the backcountry is far more controllable than the “Luck of the Draw”.

If I could open the backcountry ski world's eyes, especially beginners, to any one thing: All we can do is alter the odds somewhat in our favor. They're still odds. Security anywhere, but particularly the mountains, is never certain. If you play this game long enough, you'll lose friends. You might get crippled.

On an individual basis, the risk/reward decision can be very rational. Willing to accept dying in the mountains once every hundred years? More than 200 people attend NSAS each year. Life is precious.

Willing to die in the mountains once every hundred years? If you play 100 days/year, you need to make 10-30,000 correct decisions for every one you get really wrong.





Every accident is sad. Really really sad. Incomparably sad. The fickle spotlight of press attention makes me wish that other accidents, even ones that happened that day could receive similar light. I didn't know Karl Milanowski, but I bet his daughter's college fund could benefit from a trip to the New York Times front page.

If I have a takeaway from Tunnel Creek, it was that this sort of accident can happen to me and to my friends. It's the same takeaway as with other recent slides. We've skied the backside of Cowboy in fairly similar conditions. Touring the day before Tunnel Creek at Snoqualmie, we noted that the snowpack was the sort of thing that catches experts. Many whispers of stability, and only a few meek mentions of an easy, but significant, trigger on some aspects at some elevations. It's easy to miss the meek whispers sometimes; we all do.