February 24, 2013 Heather Ridge Avalanche

I wrote most of the below when I got home Sunday evening.  I waited to post it until I had sign-off from all of my partners that day.  Feel free to tell me what a dumbass I am, as long as you can also help me learn from this.  My partners are good people and we all know we share some responsibility for this incident, but I took it upon myself to write it up and I was the one most affected by it.  We are all interested in learning whatever we can from this incident.

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Today is Sunday, 2/24/2013.  I'm writing this in the hope of learning more and helping others who might need the lesson to learn something also.

I welcome comments and input, especially on any aspects of our decision making process that you think I haven't addressed below.  My goal is to never have something like this happen again.   I fully realize how fortunate I am and the price I'm paying is far lower than it could have been.  I never want to do something to endanger my friends or myself again.

We have been in a cold storm cycle for the last few days with about 30" of new snow showing up on the telemetry at Stevens Pass since Wednesday.  Freezing levels have remained low though temps have gotten warmish (upper 20s @ 4K’) during the day and there were some gusty winds up to 55mph or so from the S - SW Thursday night into Friday morning and again Friday night into Saturday morning.

The Northwest Avalanche Center ( www.nwac.us ) predicted "Considerable" danger at elevations above 4000' today with the main danger being wind slabs and the danger level trending upwards as a warm front moves into the area this evening.  The weather was cloudy but calm with a freezing fog that was creating a thin ice layer in more open/exposed areas at higher elevations.
There were 4 skiers and two dogs in our party.  Our goal was to ski the sheltered N. facing aspects off Skyline Ridge.  It's become one of our go-to places on days when lots of snow has fallen but conditions are sketchy.  This area is sheltered well from winds and there are lots of large old-growth trees that help prevent the formation of slabs underneath them and provide good anchors.   Our intended route is shown in red on the map. 

I'm pretty familiar with this area, but obviously not familiar enough.  Our first mistake was getting off-route and this is my fault as I led us up the wrong trail and we ended up following the blue route as I thought we needed to follow the skin track to the right when it split.  Upon gaining the radio tower at the edge of the ridge we began climbing the ridgeline in a more Northerly direction as I knew we'd missed the saddle and it was off in that direction.  Eventually we came to a place where the ridgeline leveled out a bit and I wasn't sure where we were as I didn't have a GPS and it was foggy/cloudy so I couldn't see any landmarks.  I thought we had come over much farther than we had and were now just above the saddle, the area was heavily treed and we could see good lines down through them. 

I dug a pit (indicated by the first yellow diamond along our route) down to the thick crust from last week's warm rain and found nothing reactive or concerning.  Nothing popped on a compression test and I had to whack the shovel pretty hard with a straight arm from the shoulder to get the column to collapse which it did by crumbling under the shovel, no shearing at all.
We skied down through the trees and it was pretty nice.  Deep, dense pow and nothing moving or making us suspicious.  As we went down we could hear traffic on the highway below and knew we were off-route.  We came out of the trees onto the more open slopes to the North somewhere around the 4400-4600' level and as we were down out of the clouds we could see across the valley and we knew right where we were again.  The snow was skiing great here and we'd seen nothing to indicate poor stability so we decided to skin back up to the ridgeline and ski the more open slopes we found ourselves on.  I believe this area is known as Moonlight Basin.

About 2/3 of the way up I decided to dig another pit (second yellow diamond on our route) as we were now out of the trees on more open and possibly wind-affected slopes and on a different aspect.  Again, the compression test looked great.  Nothing popped and the column collapsed first from a vertical fracture in the top 6” after 4 or 5 hard whacks with a straight arm - there didn't appear to be anything that wanted to shear here and there were no discernible layers until you got down to the previous week's thick crust.  In hindsight that fracture in the top 6” probably indicated the propensity for crack propagation but considering the force I put into it, that it was in the top 6”, and that we’d seen no cracking or other bad signs during our skin up, it didn’t concern me.  This is where I made the second mistake - I assumed that a pit dug only a couple hundred feet below the ridgeline indicated good stability on the entire slope.  In hindsight I'm reminded of the truism that a pit only shows you the conditions at that specific point.

We finished our climb to the ridgeline and began de-skinning.  Another mistake made here - I assumed that because I was the last one to the ridge that everyone else was ready to go - they weren't.  I climbed up a bit of a knob to the North of the saddle where the rest of the group was standing, de-skinned, and launched myself off a steep rollover.  Two mistakes made here in rapid succession - skiing over a convexity and not communicating my intentions to the group or waiting until they were ready to go.  I got down to just about the bottom of the knob (maybe 10' below where'd I'd dropped in), turned to my right and saw the crack shoot out ahead of me and about 2-3' above me.   I could see that I was at the very upper edge of the slide and tried to continue traversing, hoping it would run out from under me but of course it didn't.  It knocked me over, head downhill, onto my stomach.  My legs were bent at the knees and my head was above the snow and the ride began.  I paddled with my arms, trying to keep my head up and I also kept my legs bent in the hopes that if I did get buried maybe one of them would be sticking up out of the snow.  I didn’t want my skis getting down into the snow but the snow caught the tip of my left ski and rolled that leg underneath me, wrenching my left knee.  At about this time my left shoulder which is in pretty sad shape and has dislocated several times in the last year dislocated again.  I kept paddling and it seemed to be working until my submerged leg pulled me around and I lost sight of the sky and figured I was in for a burial.  Then I stopped.  My best guess is that I was at about the 4800-4900' level. 
I raised my head and was looking back up at my partners who were still standing on the edge of the ridge.  They didn’t even realize I’d been caught in an avalanche at first because the fracture didn’t reach all the way over to their position and their view of the top of the slope and the crown was obscured by the knob I’d climbed up.  My left leg was twisted under me but my right leg was mostly free and I managed to completely free it.  Other than the left leg I was basically on top of the snow.  However, with my left shoulder suffering a posterior dislocation and my left leg twisted up under me I couldn't move much or reach far enough back to release my right ski.  I called out to my partners and they quickly came to my aid, freeing my feet then two of them worked to get the shoulder back in as I was unable to do it myself while the third took pictures of the crown and slide path. 

My left knee had no stability and wouldn't bear much weight but I was able to get my skis back on and side-stepped and side-slipped the fall line all the way back down to the Pacific Crest Trail with my partners mashing the snow down ahead of me to make it easier to slide on and me basically skiing on one ski with the left one along for the ride.  Once at the PCT we skinned back to the parking lot.

The crown of this slide is about 2' tall and only went about 20' out in front of me to the South but went easily 100-150' behind me to the North and propagated in some trees further East.  The slide ran for approximately 800' vertical and about 1000’ long to just below where we had initially come out onto the slope.  There's a bench and line of small trees there and that stopped the last of it from going any further.  The picture with the ski pole in it shows the crown approximately 400’ downslope from the highest point.


We've talked about this amongst ourselves and I think these are the mistakes we agree were made.  I'm interested to hear what others think.

First - not sticking to the original plan and skiing the terrain that we knew had the best chance for stability this day.  When we weren't sure exactly where we were we could have easily skied back down a bit, picked up the trail to Skyline Lake and gotten back on track.

Second – Communication:  One member of the party expressed reservations about the slope but the rest of us were eager to try it out and he didn't press the issue.  He stated, “Why don’t we skin along the ridge to where we skied before in the trees.”  Since a pit was dug, he didn’t press the concern.  When we got to the top I didn’t make sure everyone was on the same page and that everyone was ready to go. One person still had his skins on at that point and the others didn’t realize I was dropping in when I did. I should have made sure everyone was ready and that we were watching each other as we dropped in.

Third - not properly assessing the dangers of the slope we were on.  The second pit I dug showed good stability, and indeed at that point on the slope it was quite stable.  However, up higher along the ridgeline there were fresh cornices and obviously the wind had been moving a lot of snow up there.  We didn’t reassess conditions when we got to the top despite the evidence of a lot of transport and possible slab formation staring us in the face (see the picture of the group standing on the ridgeline).

Fourth – Skiing over an obvious trigger point when stability was less than optimal.  I just had to get up a little higher and hit something a little steeper and the fact I was skiing over a convexity didn’t even enter my thought process.

I know I’m probably overlooking some things here.  There are probably many things that are obvious to the outside observer that we did wrong beyond what’s written.  I welcome any comments that can help us to learn from this incident.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up, and for being willing to share it. It's not easy. I'd expect you'll keep processing what you've learned for a while, so don't be surprised to find your takeaways evolving a bit.

I'll save my observations for later, but it seems like you've got a pretty good idea of what happened. It's rarely one big mistake, but a series of small choices that make the difference.

Thanks for your honest assessment of your trip! I'm relatively new new to the scene and your report of your incedent is extremely helpful. Your reflection on the days events and the factors that led to them is a great reminder that its just as important to check your desicions as it is the snow pack. Invaluable beta, thank you. Glad you made it home safe!

Thanks so much, Will. Such a great incident description and assessment. The most important aspect of TAY is how it is becoming such a resource for these necessary and challenging topics. It is another incident that I will hopefully catalog in my brain on how easy it is to get enthused and let guard down slightly. How fast our decision process morphs. I am also thinking of how many reports come right from traditional high use spots: Moonlight, Phantom, Kendall West, etc. By being willing to share it, you are helping to keep me safer.
I am so glad your injuries are not more serious and hope you heal up soon. Still wondering how we haven't ended up in some parking lot, on some morning, as members of the same party for a day of touring.
Much Appreciated,
John

Thanks for sharing Will - glad you and your party made it out safe.

Whew, that was an intense read, esp. since that is one of my favorite spots. Thanks for sharing, always good for all of us to learn from each others mistakes. Sorry for your injury, but glad it wasn't worse!