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.

Tragically, this season is ending in much the same way it began -- in the past week four snowmobile fatalities have occurred in three separate accidents:

• One near Hellroaring Creek (Official CAC report in PDF format) on Wednesday
• Two near McBride, BC on Tuesday
• One near Whitewater, near Blue River (Official CAC report in PDF format) on March 21.

The Canadian Avalanche center has been diligently working on ways to reach the sledding community, and their recent news releases reflect the end of a tough season.

Interestingly, folks out there still have ideas on where the missing link is -- the link that will connect danger and sledding for these folks. One such idea comes from Lou Dawson (scroll to the bottom of the post), namely, that every snowmobile gets sold with a safety booklet for backcountry travel...but that booklet mentions nothing about avalanches.

Real help, unfortunately, has seemed to be elusive so far....

Such hard stuff. My heart goes out to all those involved.

Minutes ago, the Associated Press released news of another snowmobile avalanche fatality near Valemount, BC, Canada, bringing the total number of fatalities in Canada to 15 for 2008/09.

By looking at the current accident numbers for the year, one can see that snowmobiling has, at least for now, risen to the forefront of these report numbers. Good, healing thoughts to the friends and family of those involved. After the huge incident near Fernie over the holiday, western Canada needs a little love and peace.

However, remember that last year, as of the end of January, we had 40 fatal accidents in North America out of a total 52 for the 2007/08 season, far above our current number of 26.