TheSnowpit.com News Blog

Two Crazy Incidents with Thankfully Good Outcomes

• John Griber survives serac fall on Everest
• Plane propeller saves two on Wester Ross Peak, Scotland

To begin, the stunning photographs and first hand account on TetonAT make John Griber's survival of a serac fall on Everest quite gut-clenching. Few of us have the opportunity to witness an avalanche of that size, much less be a speck upon the glacier immediately below the falling snow.

By chance, he was clipped in to a fixed line and behind a serac relative to the avalanche, and he believes this saved him. Thank goodness.

Then, two climbers were reported to have been saved by a propeller after being caught in an avalanche on Wester Ross Peak in Scotland. The plane providing the propeller wreckage had crashed into the mountain in 1951, killing the eight crew aboard.

The roped team crashed into and then hung from the propeller as the avalanche passed over them. They named their newly ascended route Bruised Violet in honor of the color that the propeller inflicted upon one of their arms.

Jane Candlish of The Press and Journal quotes the Scottish Avalanche Information Service co-ordinator, Mark Diggins:

It is astonishing to think that those men lost their lives on that plane and yet it saved someone’s life in the future.

• Avalanche claims three in Tibet
• Fatal fall on Taylor Glacier, Colorado
• Surrey man rescues solo climber on Mount Baker from crevasse
• Montana Ham radio operater picks up injured hiker's call in Washington

Despite winter still playing hookie here in Canada, avalanche danger is always present out in the Himalaya. Three Japanese climbers perished in an avalanche on Kulagangri; they were part of a larger team of seven. Apparently, the snow had been very heavy during the ascent.

But heavy snow isn't always the issue. A man slipped on Tuesday while skiing the late-season ice on the Taylor Glacier in RMNP, Colorado. He suffered fatal injuries. His friends, who were the first to find him, actually mounted a search themselves when he didn't return on time.

On a lighter note, an avalanche actually seemed to serve a minor positive role in a rescue. A solo hiker on Mount Baker fell into a crevasse September 15, and was later (miraculously) rescued by what appears to be brute strength on the part of another climbing pair who happened to hear his cries for help. One of the members simply climbed into the crevasse and got him out. Another pair, camped low on the glacier, awoke to the sound of avalanche and, while looking for the source, saw the rescue proceeding down the glacier. When the climbing pair and injured man reached their tent, they were ready.

Finally, only weakly related to snow but still cool, a Montana ham radio operator happened to receive the distress calls of a man hiking in the Cascades in late September. Using the 40 meter band, the Montanan was able to get the GPS coordinates and condition of the man in the Cascades, who had broken his leg. The transmissions, though spanning over 600 km, helped get the injured man out just after a major snowstorm.

• Ice avalanche on K2 results in eleven fatalities
• Modeling of global warming's effect on snowmelt timing shows changes over last 50 years
• Ice and snow research 'SnoMote' robot reaches third generation of development

I learned about the tradgedy on K2 while I was emotionally and environmentally a million miles away - kayaking in the San Juan Islands. The news has since turned to other human interest stories surrounding the disaster, but originally the story took over the headlines. Accounts vary, as aptly pointed out by this Rock and Ice article, but it seems that some (2-4) climbers perished in the actual serac collapse, and a number of others were stranded above that area as the serac had ripped away a great deal of fixed line.

The eleven resulting fatalities from the avalanche and aftermath eventually secured the incident as the worst in K2's history. The worst avalanche incidents in history in North America both (oddly enough) occurred in 1910, one at Roger's Pass holding the record in Canada (62 fatalities of workers clearing a slide), and one near Steven's Pass in Washington holding the record for the United States (96 fatalities of passengers in stopped trains). The United States avalanche was attributed to the warming after the storm.

Of course, mountaineering-specific avalanche incidents are scattered across history as well. The K2 incident also reminded me of the 1981 tradgedy on Rainier where 11 climbers were buried under a falling serac on the Ingraham glacier, which is still considered the worst mountaineering accident in the States. An avalanche on Lenin took 40 lives in 1990. And the list goes on. Many are calling the K2 incident the worst in history, but tradgedy in the mountains goes as far back as our history of them does. However, it does not seem any less horrible because of that. May the K2 climbers rest in peace; what a terrible incident.

Though predicting the melting, moving, and falling of seracs like the one on K2 remains one of the worlds unsolved mysteries, scientists continue to track the timing and melting of the much more predictable seasonal snowpack. In a recent study on modeling the timing of the snowmelt year after year, the snowpack seems to have crept up to melting 10-15 days earlier over the past 50 years. Snowmelt affects many, many things from the timing of flood and peak runoff, to how water gets stored for use in the summer.

Then, combining the press given to both global warming and the Olympics, a lot of positive press is actually being given to China on their efforts to go green. Projects include building a wholly zero-carbon city named Dongtan expected to hold 500,000 people by 2050. In addition, they're allowing various studies by air to study the effect of the Olympics on pollution. In fact, the country as a whole has reduced pollution production to protect the athletes, reducing industrial activity by 30 percent, and automobile use by half.

Of course beyond global warming, snow research continues year round. This time, news hails from the robotics sector. Researchers from Penn State and Georgia Tech have built small mobile snowmachine sensors. The project, inspired by next-generation plans for the Mars rover, has created robots called SnoMotes which are two feet long by one foot wide and which work as a sensor network while moving across snowy areas too dangerous for humans. Sensor networks are in and of themselves very cool research (my husband is currently working on debugging and logging for the SOS sensor network operating system) and to have such a network which also must travel across trecherous terrain is very cool indeed.