Tree Well Video: Must watch!

Not avy, but related .
Tree well suffocation( NARSID) is as big a danger( especially in the terrain we in the PNW ski regularly) and resulted in the death of Paul Melby last year at Crystal. My son Stewart inverted into one a few years back and if I hadn't seen it and only been a short distance downhill from him...it could have been bad.

Conditions are getting prime for tree wells and I know that in the exuberance of skiing powder, I forget the danger and my partners( who do the same) and we don't always practice good protocol.

This video is a good reminder of what can happen.



Soapbox over!

A terrifying video. Good on the guy with the gopro to see that something was amiss as he skied past. It wasn't obvious that somebody was upside down until you looked carefully.

I'm beginning to think that carrying some walkie-talkies could be pretty valuable when skiing in terrain with bad line-of-sight, like trees.

Question for the group: how would have things turned out if it had been the tail-gunner who ended up in the well? Better be skiing short pitches so that you can sidestep your way back up, or be very fast at putting on skins.

previous discussion

previous discussion

Ooops....already posted...moderators can delete if they want to avoid clutter.
Good discussion in the original thread.

It's worth seeing it again. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be.

Thanks for posting Scotsman.