Phantom avy info? 04/06/11

I beg to differ. Hit "ALL", start at the top, read each post and you will see there is a clear expectation for personal accountability in his decision to ski.

I rear read the posts, again.
Seems to me that most of the posts like Amar's are showing interest in reading a trip report, if and when Marcus chooses to post.

Call it a difference of interpretation and semantics I guess.

This first portion will be primarily a description of the climb.  I'll follow with the slide and the ensuing self-rescue and organized SAR response, from my perspective.  A more thorough analysis of the decisions and mistakes will follow.  I deliberately went with a "trip report" style format in this part, to try to capture the mood of our trip up so that I could better understand where my decision making failed.

To be clear, I am writing this as much for me and my friends and family as I am for anyone else.  The lessons I take from this will be more deeply ingrained because of this process.  If others can learn from it, so much the better.

****************

The Climb

I’ve said for years that if I ever had to use my avalanche transceiver, I’ve screwed up big time.  But here I am, having just hacked a wad of snow the size of a tangerine out of my throat, switching to receive and hoping to hear a sound.  I’ve screwed up big time.

--

Roger, Doug, Dan, Drew and I met at the Mercer Island Park & Ride a little after 5 a.m. on Wednesday, aiming to get in a dawn patrol at Snoqualmie Pass and be back in town by 10:30.  We piled into Doug & Dan’s cars and headed up to Alpental, excited for fresh snow and new company.  Roger and I had already discussed the telemetry, expecting upward of two feet of snow on the upper slopes and knowing that any notions we’d had of skiing the Slot or the Snot were not going to happen.  The plan was to head up and see what we found – beyond that we didn’t discuss it much.

We arrived at the maintenance lot and hit the trail by 6:15.  Trailbreaking was arduous, Roger plowing ahead through 12-18” of light dry snow, with pockets up to waist deep.  We knew this wasn’t going to be a one-hour blast to the top and switched trailbreakers from time to time as we climbed through the trees to the left of the Phantom.  We could feel the layers in the top few feet of the snowpack, with the obvious mushy rain soaked snow about a pole length down.

Progress through the trees eased as we got farther up, the SW slopes of Snoqualmie rolling back below the steeper upper pitches above the entrance to the Snot couloir.  The snow remained excellent and, while we could get the new snow to break in soft slabs on the steeper kick turns, we continued up, spreading out as we began to encounter steeper sections.  Roger was breaking trail again, doing a good job of picking a line with minimal exposure to the Snot entrance.

It was now 9:00, the first 2600 feet having taken almost three hours.  We had a brief discussion about timing, as Doug and I both had to be back in town before the others.  We talked about continuing up another couple hundred feet to the Slot entrance, just to look, then returning back down.  I felt I had enough time to make it work, so we pressed on.

We traversed back to the right, climbing away from the ridge.  The trail breaking was easier near the ridge, maybe 6-12”, and the wind had picked up.  I put on my thicker gloves and gave Roger some space.  He pointed out a couple of features to avoid on the trip down – places he’d seen slide activity in his past trips.

As we wrapped a little farther away from the ridge, we came into deeper pockets of snow, particularly in the many small gully/concavity features on the upper slopes.  The snow seemed a bit more reactive on the kickturns, the soft slabs a little more cohesive.  No whumphing or shooting cracks, but the exposed upper slopes were definitely showing some new signs.

Roger cut out across the bottom of a steeper section, perhaps 60 feet wide.  I waited in a pocket of trees for him to clear it then, when he put in a kickturn below a few thick trees, I zipped over to him quickly, so that I could watch him climb back across in the other direction.  I checked behind me and saw that Dan had followed me across the slope and was with me at the turn.  Too late now, I thought, and then I looked back to Roger and the crack rips out above him and he is falling and I am falling and we have screwed up big time.

Marcus, part one of your accident is intense (and is the nightmare of every skier) :'(

I'm glad that you and everyone else made it back alive.

Thank you so much for sharing Marcus. I'm saying that as both an avalanche educator & fellow backcountry skier - one who has made my share of mistakes but has just been luckier.  I am  still susceptible to making such mistakes again. That's why your story has such great value in the telling - it will give cause & pause for reflection by many. 

Thank you Marcus, I am sorry you guys found yourselves in that position. It is a great lesson in communication, observations and the impacts it has.

I wish you all a seedy recovery!

Marcus – I am glad that the outcome to your adventure was not as bad as it could have been. From having personally gone through a similar situation I would just like to make a couple of comments. Hopefully by telling your story you will get others to think about their own decision making. It may be hard to believe now but in time your memories of the details will begin to fade. How much you post online is entirely up to you but for your own benefit I suggest that while everything is still fresh in your mind you write a journal including all the small details of that day and most importantly your emotions as the events unfolded. I don’t think you will regret it. You are probably going to hear a lot of second guessing from the peanut gallery but I would be willing to bet that anyone who has spent any amount of time in the backcountry has made their own fair share of bad decisions with the only difference being that they were fortunate enough to get away with it. Hopefully you will soon be back in the saddle a little older and a little wiser.