The Reality
This piece originally appeared in May 2010 issue of Wilderness Magazine
The Reality
By: Scott Kennedy
The snow is silent. Like an unreflective ocean it’s everywhere – in my dream I can taste the cold air and the vacuum of sound covers everything. My skin tingles as ice crystals blow in the wind and sting my cheek. I look up and see a torrent of snow rumbling towards me like a breaking wave – still all is silent when the wall of winter crashes on me and everything goes black. The dream always ends there, but this nightmare can come true.
It was a brisk August evening; the lifts at Coronet Peak had just closed for the day. The sun was sinking low on the horizon and three friends geared up at the base of the mountain. Experienced backcountry skiers all of them, the plan was to skin up and ski the groomed front side run back to the base. This was a trip to stretch the legs, keep the fitness up and get some fresh air before heading to the pub for a pint. The high avalanche risk meant skiing off piste was out of the question.
The three skiers inched their way upwards to the sounds of creaking gear and the squeak of cold winter snow on its way towards the overnight freeze. Amidst the huffing and puffing there was the familiar banter between three friends who’ve spent a lifetime together in the hills. One of them stopped – she could hear something.
“What is that? Can you guys hear that?” she asked as her two companions stopping skinning. “I think I hear somebody – can you hear that?”
Off in the distance far to the left, over the boundary fence and into the growing shadows of evening, the faint outline of a man emerged. It was too far to hear the words that he was yelling, but the tone, the intonation of his voice came through loud and clear.
Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
They ripped the skins of their skis and moved left towards the frantic solo figure. As they approached the panic filled stranger sputtered words in a near incoherent babble of shock and panic. Like deciphering an unknown tongue – four words tumbled out that brought it all home. “Avalanche – my brother’s buried.”
The reality of the situation hit them like a bucket of cold water. This was the moment that they’d imagined so many times as that worst case scenario. This wasn’t a practice run, this wasn’t a training simulation, this was the real thing. There was someone buried under the avalanche debris stretching in front of them for the length of five rugby fields.
“Where was he last seen?”
“He went first, turned the corner and the whole slope avalanched, I lost sight of him.”
“Is he wearing an avalanche transceiver?”
“No.”
By this time he’d been buried for at least ten minutes, there we no surface signs and he wasn’t wearing a transceiver. Nightmares are made of these. The needle in the haystack with the guillotine at the ready.
A call to 111 was made in an effort to get the ski patrol up the hill and to the scene as soon as possible. The Wellington based operator struggled to understand the situation, the location and the urgency. Time was running out and the clock had just started to run.
A hasty search for any signs of the victim produced nothing and rescue equipment they had was cobbled together. Without a transceiver avalanche probes were the only option for search. The ocean of snow was holding the dying deep in its depths. With no other option a probe line was formed as the ski patrol arrived on scene. By this time he’d been buried for twenty minutes.
Including the ski patrol the rescue party was now six strong as they started to systematically probe the massive area. Pushing the probe to the snow – the bottom of the debris was beyond the length of the device. 3m down and no touching bottom.
The rumble of helicopters signaled that more help had arrived. Within minutes thirty rescuers were searching the slope. Ski patrollers from around the Southern Lakes were pouring onto the scene attempting to avert tragedy with sheer will and numbers as their only weapon.
For another hour they probed and then the avalanche dog arrived. Smelling the snow he picked two possible locations – probing frantically there was nothing to be found. Soon a Recco device arrived and they used it to scan the surface of the snow. With the ability to pick up the electronics of a cell phone it was a last option in a situation that was running out of time. Ninety minutes buried.
The Recco beeps at the second place the dog indicated – he was down there, he must be. Probing again it was too deep to get a probe strike. With nothing to lose, in teams of three, the patrollers dug for all they were worth. They dug with the frantic strength of a mother lifting a car off a child. They dug like it was their friend, their brother, buried somewhere under the snow.
A yell came from the pit – they’d found him. Buried upside down they struck his snowboard first. So dense the snow, so hard the compaction it took thirty minutes to extract him. Frantic first-aid, calls of no pulse, no respiration. Buried for two hours there was nothing to be done.
“The whole time there was this sense of urgency – it was like a weight crushing my chest. If only he’d been wearing a transceiver, if only he’s heeded the high avalanche warning, if only he’d made better choices things could have been different.”
On cold nights as the snow floats down silhouetted by the moon my thoughts drift to what could have been. Friends long gone, friends I’ll never know and friends changed forever. Innocence lost, no second chances, no tradebacks.
