Timing is everything
"Are you with this crew?”
The red jacket of the ski patroller was about 50 feet above me, barely visible in the blowing snow and just above the X-crossed skis that are the universal sign for trouble.
Often that sign is just a broken leg or snapped collarbone, but sometimes it’s a warning of something much worse. In this case, the X marked the spot of a panting, panicked skier who was laying on his back in deep powder, breathing heavy and staring up into the sky. He was talking rapidly, spitting out adrenaline fueled words due to the fact that about 20 minutes ago he thought he was going to die from suffocation
“Yeah. My son is the one who found this guy in the tree well.”
“Well … your son saved his life.”
As this stranger was still processing away about what had just happened — rambling away about the magnitude of the situation, how he had taught skiing in Europe, how he had just watched a video about avalanche safety, how he and my son should exchange phone numbers and stay in touch, how that last cry for help was actually is his last breath, and how he was certain he was soon going to die — my skinny 19-year old offspring was still standing above him with concern, hands on his knees and leaning in. with a calming smile below a straggly ironic mustache.
Two days earlier – 48-plus hours and numerous minutes – our entire presence in this snowy corner of Wyoming was totally up in the air. Even in a good year, It’s never easy to get to the Northern Rockies in January. But in this particular year and for this particular trip, the usual challenges were worsened by a wave of out-of-nowhere flight cancellations due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Thousands of flights were being cancelled every day over the New Year’s Weekend, like snow stacking up on a windowsill, higher and higher. Ticking closer to our January 4 departure date.
Our original itinerary – Burlington/Newark/Jackson – was an early casualty, cancelled five days ahead of our actual scheduled flights. We were rebooked automatically, of course, but we were also given the opportunity to cancel the trip with no penalty.
So as a family, we wrapped our heads around the reality that the trip just might not happen, and had a family meeting — something we don’t do very often. In this case, it was important to get a read on what everybody wanted to do and the level of risk they were willing to accept. Do we roll the dice and chance spending a couple days in the purgatory of the Chicago airport Hilton? Or do we kick the can down the road and postpone for a year? It was a good conversation with plenty of honesty and heart-felt sentiments covering the full range from caution, to pragmatism, to fuck it let's go. By the end of the family meeting, we were agreed. We were going to go for it, despite the very very real possibility that the whole thing could easily go sideways. My son said it best, though: "I just think that if we can make it there, That first turn is going to be so worth it."
As expected, however, things did go sideways right from the start. Our inbound plane was two hours late, and by the time we got to O'Hare, our Denver flight was long gone. We grabbed an airport hotel room, ate French Onion soup and wedge salads in a red leather chop house staffed by Eastern European waitresses, and caught a morning flight the next day to Wyoming,
The thought was not lost on us that if we’d made our original flight – or if we’d been delayed even more – we would not have been on that exact part of the mountain at that exact moment when that exact skier took his last breath and made a final gasp for help.
When my son stopped and turned toward the small voice in the trees, he saw nothing but branches at first, and nothing but snow. As usual, he had his headphones in and was listening to music, so it crossed his mind that maybe he had imagined things. On a second look, though, he saw a single ski wrapped in the low branches. Which was connected to a boot. Which was connected to a leg. Which pointed almost straight downward toward the trunk of the tree. This person, this human, had been struggling to free themselves from this snow trap, but every time he tried to wrest himself away from the snare of the snowy boughs, his head would sink deeper down and more snow would fall on his face. Like a human dart pointed headfirst toward the base of the tree.
Tree well deaths are sadly common on ski mountains known for deep snow, and they don’t discriminate between experts and novices. Because the tree itself is giving off a tiny bit of heat relative to below-freezing temperatures, the snow around the trunk becomes thinner, almost rotted, like a snowy trap door waiting to suck in a nearby skier. It can happen when a skier or snowboarder falls near trees, but it can also happen when they’re trying to traverse through a cluster of tight trees, and a ski placed too near can spin the skier around and drop them backward, headfirst into a potentially fatal trap.
I found a stat that 9 out of 10 skiers involved in a practice situation involving tree wells were not able to extricate themselves. No partner, no rescue. “In many cases, he or she can die as quickly as someone can drown in water.” LINK
“Where's your partner?"
That was the first thing the ski patroller said to the newly alive survivor. It's not just a faux pas to ski solo on a heavy, deep, wind-loaded powder day: it's potentially fatal. The skier’s "partner", apparently, was far ahead as he’d been trying to prove his ski superiority, a not-that-unusual practice of a competitive, somewhat dickish friend leaving his lesser able buddy in the dust.
"Well,” the patroller paused, “when you find him, he owes you way more than a beer.”