Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Excellent NYT multi-media article: Tunnel Creek avalanche

An excellent multi-media article in the New York Times on last year's Tunnel Creek avalanche:
www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

Several comments from later interviews of some of the skiers struck me:

"I've been riding Stevens Pass since I was 3 years old,” Dessert said. "I can tell circumstances, and I just felt like something besides myself was in charge. They're all so professional and intelligent and driven and powerful and riding with athletic prowess, yet everything in my mind was going off, wanting to tell them to stop.”

"I could see the others when I cut over,” Wangen said. "I thought: Oh yeah, that's a bad place to be. That's a bad place to be with that many people. But I didn't say anything. I didn't want to be the jerk.”

This seems a classic case where maybe we ought to be talking about integrating something along the lines of the Coast Guard GAR model into the recreation level of users. Maybe start out with the more extreme sports: climbing, backcountry skiing, but then roll out into average trips.

www.uscg.mil/hq/nsfweb/foscr/ASTFOSCRSeminar/Presentations/Safety/ORM-GAR.pdf

The Coast Guard started using this maybe 10 years ago after a series of rescuer accidents. Many were traced to a gung-ho (and understandable) "gotta get there" attitude where, really, a few minutes taking a deep breath and examining the crews training, experience, equipment and conditions. Agencies have started doing this for SAR and other emergency response, but perhaps it can be adapted to recreation pre-trip or pre-gnarly-route travel.

In addition, the NYT article is great because it's a brilliant use of text and multi media to recreate the incident. Note also 3D animation of mountain with relative routes of skiers. A long article, but well worth settling in with a cup of coffee and viewing.

George

Harrowing. If you are headed up to the Sierra in the winter, here are two good advisories to check:

http://www.sierraavalanchecenter.org/advisory
http://esavalanche.org/advisory

the NYT article is excellent. Great piece of research and reporting on an event that ususally just makes brief death count headlines without anyone ever looking into the deeper dynamics that put the victims into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Listen to the internal alarm bells, tell others about it, even if you think "they know what they are doing" - and that counts not only for skiing in dangerous conditions, but also for trips up to peaks during unstable stormy summer weather.