Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 143 posts

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#61

Post by gtani »

grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

This was written for a less general purpose audience

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/T...

I just wrote about this from 3 days ago, an inbounds slide at Crystal which is about 40 miles away from the Pass, as the crow flies

http://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/154319/inbounds_slid...

And truthfully, this thread is very similar to the discussion when Craig Kelly's group was caught out in Revelstoke (2003). We have better beacons and airbags but not much has changed (and funding for a lot of avalanche forecasters has been cut

http://www.staynehoff.net/craig_kelly_death7.htm

I used to not think about slides but one day i was skinning around Kirkwood by myself (there are a few areas like K, Alta and Mammoth, that I used to know like the back of my hand) and the snow was whumphing and i was thinking it was textbook snow. A little crown broke off, maybe 2 inches high, 8 feet wide, and I was shocked at how hard it hit my boots, almost knocked me over

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#62

Post by masklinn »

grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

> They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!

Those caught in the avalanche didn't see any signs, 3 locals splintered from the group at the top and did, on a separate route.

> Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.

It's fairly clearly noted that even those in the path stopped in an old-growth bunch of trees, that's usually expected to be safe[0] (in fact, one of the 4 wedged himself in a tree and didn't get carried away)

> Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.

There were multiple people in search mode, and the first 911 call mentioned was 7mn after the avalanche, not "immediately" by a long shot.

[0] of course not as safe — or smart — as not being in the path at all to start with

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#63

Post by subpixel »

arscan wrote: post #10

I think this works because the little videos in the breaks actually do a great job of complementing the content of the article (and happen to be pretty). There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more harm then good for somebody actuall…

Holy crap is that womenandtech format awful. It's like the internet version of a really bad pop-up-book.

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#64

Post by masklinn »

gamble wrote: post #57
grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where - individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to question the group.

FWIW there were such mentions in this account, section 2 or 3.

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#65

Post by eigenvector »

grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

Many people, especially those who have acquired substantial skiing proficiency in a setting that is superficially similar to the backcountry (i.e. maintained and patrolled ski areas) do not truly appreciate the risks of backcountry travel in the mountains.

We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.

Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.

For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#66

Post by masklinn »

grecy wrote: post #58
Someone wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths. That is not what I got from reading that. Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference. At least that is the impression I got from the description of the injuries. and a lot of them knew better. And I think you somewhat agree. Or do you think they knew, but weren't trained well enough? Thinking about how this could happen, I t…

> Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference That statement shows you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and clearly have no place commenting here. The reality is that how you react after an avalanche will absolutely impact the lives of those buried. > Or do you think they knew They seemed to know, but went against their gut. > Also, no amount of training can f…

> The reality is that how you react after an avalanche will absolutely impact the lives of those buried.

The reality of that avalanche is that there was none: according to the doc' report, all three deceased were dead on arrival from blunt force trauma.

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#67

Post by bencpeters »

grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

The overwhelming reaction I had to this was of how bad the group dynamic sounded. I don't really agree with "severe lack of training and practice caused deaths". Everyone involved had some degree of backcountry experience - many of them had a lot. The issue wasn't lack of training and practice, the issue was how many of the skiers ignored their training and didn't listen to what their experience was trying to tell them.

The primary take-aways I found were to pay more attention to the human factor, keep group size down and route/hazard discussions happening, even (especially?) when skiing with pros or people you really respect and don't ski with all the time.

Fairly strongly disagree on hitting the slope at 11:45 and no snow pit being problems though. Totally depends on the day, and I wasn't there, but this thing slid on depth hoar 3 feet down - that's not caused by a little bit of february sun in Washington. As for digging pits, while I think they can be a good tool to get a look at the snowpack, I also think it's easy to rely on them too much. Spatial variability in a snow pack is HUGE, and all a pit does is tell you how the snow is behaving at one little, somewhat random point. Especially if you're a local and ski in the BC all the time, you should have a pretty good sense of what the snow pack is doing without doing any digging at all. In my home range (the Wasatch), I typically use snow pits mostly to test SPECIFIC questions like "how energetic is this known weak layer that I've been watching for days?." Far more useful are small little "hand pits" and pole probes as you go along, feeling the snow pack in a lot of different places to gather more data points. In this particular case, however, everyone already knew it was touchy, a snow pit wouldn't have changed much. The problem was that they didn't plan or ski accordingly.

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#68

Post by masklinn »

untog wrote: post #32
mrb wrote: post #24

Sigh, Flash crashed on me (Chrome 23, Windows 7 64-bit)... I bet doing this in HTML5 would be more reliable. Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the following paragraph: "To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally." Ho…

All the videos are HTML5 tags for me. The mountain-top diagram isn't Flash, either.

> All the videos are HTML5 tags for me.

Not the case here, the "big" ones are tags but the smaller videos embedded from linked from the text is flash (and that's apparently sufficient to make everything crawl to a halt, Chrome barely shows up in top but the flash process maxes out a core)

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#69

Post by subsystem »

gamble wrote: post #57
grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where - individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to question the group.

Yes, diffusion of responsibility. Psychology should be a big part of safety training. After all, most of the time you're training for something out of the ordinary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Re: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

#70

Post by bencpeters »

gamble wrote: post #57
grecy wrote: post #43

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading th…

Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where - individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to question the group.

IIRC Outside Magazine did an article about it in the past few months too, although I have not read it.
Post reply on HN