Tree well rescue

I shouldn't laugh, but it is funny!!  I had the mis fortune to do it myself once. It's was a quick learning curve!

One of my closest moments in the mountains was a snow immersion incident back in 2003 at Rogers Pass.

Ever year in BC there's a fatality as well as a couple near missies due to skiers not taking buddying up as seriously as they should. I try to remind guests of the hazard on a daily basis when its deep.

That morning in 2003 we arrived at the Rogers Pass Visitor Centre the parking lot was more or less empty as it was a weekday. It was a bit of a tricky year with dangerous avalanche conditions due to a November rain crust so we decided to check out Teddy Bear Trees, which has some great skiing with no overhead hazard. We'd been restricted for the last week to only a few areas and had grown tired of Grizzly Shoulder so we were looking for a change of scenery and fresh tracks. 

My friend Bryon and I started to work our way up Connaught Creek and broke trail for a couple hours climbing 600m in waist deep snow. Finally at the top we stripped the skins and skied to the valley bottom, it was unreal skiing top to bottom, over the head face shots, definetly the best day of the season.

Since the uptrack was built we went for another lap and made our way back up in an hour and half. On our second decent we choose a line that was a little to the skiers left which had some potential open slopes. We decided that it was manageable as you could keep to the trees and avoid the upper exposed section.  We skied a short pitch and regroup when the next part wasn't as obvious as we thought. It was hard to tell where we were due to the poor visibility so I suggested that I would check the next section and let him know if we were on the right line. I skied down and stopped on top of a bump to take a look and a second later the pillow I was on collapsed under my skis. 

This sent me head first with my arms stretched out and the only thing that stopped me from going any deeper was my skis. After the initial shock of breathing in a bunch of snow I managed to clear my mouth, calmed down a bit and I started to wait for Bryon to pull me out. Unfortunately I soon realized that he wasn't coming and he was probably now down in the bottom of the valley. This meant he would need to skin back up and it would take at least an hour or more to get back to me, if he could even find me?!

Given the situation I decided to attempt to take my skis off, I managed to get one off easy enough but the second one wouldn't come undone. Every time I moved or wriggled more snow would work its way down and I would breath it in. At this point I could feel myself weakening and I decided I would try one last ditch effort of lift myself up and out of the hole. I managed to hook one leg out and started to lift but it was completely useless, desperate and impossible. Bryon was at least an hour away and more then likely wasn’t going to be able to find me in time. I tried one last time and remember being in a complete state of panic. I blacked out.

So at this point there were a lot of things going against me. We were skiing in a seldom-travelled area, it was a weekday, and the avalanche conditions had kept skiers away so the odds were stacked against me.

Early that morning another friend of mine Sheena drove out from Calgary and travelled 5 hours on heinous roads to Rogers Pass. They started skinning about 3 hour after us from the Visitor Centre and were intending on going for a half day of skiing. Luckily they followed our uptrack and were nearing the top of Teddy Bear trees when they saw the base of my skis and my bright orange boots. They rushed over, pulled me out to find me blueish-grey, unresponsive and not really breathing.

I still have no idea of how long I was unconscious for.

When I came too, my hearing was muffled and nothing really made sense. I opened my eyes next but everything was blurred until my friend Sheena came into focus. I tried to say her name but was unable to say anything. Then things slowly improved and I was able to speak. I was extremely cold. They wrapped me up and started to gather my things and were in the process of trying to get me up and moving when my friend Bryon arrived. With help I managed to ski out but obviously had no energy so it took a very long time to get back to the car at Visitor Centre.

To say I was lucky was an understatement and I'm very grateful that Sheena and her friends were there that day.

It took me a couple days to warm up and I took a further 10 days off of ski touring before I had the nerve to go back. The first day back I was pretty much scared of everything and it took me several more day trips before I managed to calm myself down.

Anyways buddying up is a great way to insure this doesn't happen, likewise it's great to have someone help if you've crash, lost ski or need a hand. Here are a couple things that can help:

-Try to buddy up with someone with the same skiing ability and speed.

-Remain in visual contact

-If you yodel or makes a particular sounds you can ski longer pitches

-When skiing in the trees avoid turning above a tree, this is how people typically fall into tree wells.

Here’s a great web site that has a bunch of information:

http://www.deepsnowsafety.org/index.php/

Thanks, Owen

That's quite a chilling (no pun intended) read!

'Fraid I am a too casual about tree wells, even though one claimed a skier INBOUNDS at Revelstoke the season before I moved here.  One thing I have that I hope does increase my odds if I do get caught is an avalung.  I think it would be far more likely to be useful in a tree well than in an avalanche.

There are some interesting lessons in the original video:

They skied together and spotted the burial which was not hugely evident on the surface. No time consuming climbing back up was required.

They remained calm.

They acted quickly and rescued the victim.

All very good.

But

There was a lot of talk about getting shovels out but only one came out after some time.

What digging was done was pretty slow and was in the wrong place. The digger should have dug in, not down, coming in from the right in the video below the skier who was just standing there. One digger should have worked with the rescuer holding the foot, while another should have dug in from the right.

There was a bare hand seen in the video but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen rescue footage where rescuers were less than scrupulous about their own well being. Frost bite might not have been an issue in this case but when you’ve got one problem why risk another? 

It's easy to be wise after the event but it's also a good idea to learn from other folk's experiences.