TheSnowpit.com News Blog

While Colorado skiers celebrated an August dusting of snow, the other side of the world remains locked in a recently unruly winter.

All heli-skiing operations use experienced judgement to continue operations
despite rising avalanche hazard. However, the "Considerable" conditions in the Richardson mountain range of New Zealand and continued heli operations there combined on August 17th to result in a 2m-deep burial of a client, who was promptly and successfully dug out alive. With three guides digging on scene and beacons available for locating the buried subject, the response seemed to be a best-case scenario for such a deep burial.

Not all deep burials are so lucky. Two brothers and their friend, all expert skiers, were skiing in Southeast Austraila (New South Wales) in Kosciuszko National Park also on August 17th, and one triggered and fell with a cornice collapse, which subsequently triggered a large avalanche. It is unclear whether the brothers carried beacons or other safety equipment, but it appears from the three-hour-plus search response that beacons did not play a helpful role even if they were worn.

This incident is rather interesting since the unburied brother, who witnessed the slide and burial, started digging in the location he felt his brother had been buried. The news points to some clues that he noticed, including skis (not attached to the subject) found sticking up out of the snow. However, he later abandoned his individual digging efforts to help the searchers who arrived on scene. Three hours later, his brother's body was recovered in the spot he had initially been digging at. The burial depth (3m) possibly would have prevented successful recovery even if he pursued first digging effort, but in this case the intuition of an on-site witness was spot-on.

Tragically, two other skiers died from collisions with trees in-bounds at Mount Blue Cow and Sun Valley ski resorts in that same area of Australia also on August 17th. The news has given much press to the unfortunate and unlikely event lineup.

• Various articles provide closing thoughts to the past winter season
• New Zealand avalanche control program comes up for award
• Two fatalities in Pyrenees and one in India
• Avalanche road closure in Montana and snow predicted in the Olympics and Cascades

Summer is here in the Northern Hemisphere, and many are providing closing thoughts on the past season (linked also from Backpacker Magazine). I have my own opinions on the subject, but with the heat already arrived, it's probably time to turn thoughts to cooler topics.

After all, winter is just starting in New Zealand. Their avalanche prediction program for Milford Sound has been put up for an award, with the hopes of gaining international appreciation for the project. The program has been in place for a while, but Jordy Hendrikx, a recent graduate of the University of Cantebury, talks extensively about the program and how it can be improved, saying: "The meteorological data for the Milford Road is now of a sufficient time length and quality to allow a thorough statistical analysis, in particular the use of discriminant analysis or classification trees." Pretty cool.

However, sadly, avalanches continue to wreak their havoc. Two members of the
Halle Orchestra perished in a Pyrenees avalanche last Wednesday; both appeared to be avid outdoorspeople. In India on June 4, one fatality and nine injured were reported below the Gomukh glaciers outside of Gangotri. So sad.

And oddly enough, despite (or perhaps because of) it being firmly June weather in the States, an avalanche has closed Beartooth Highway in Montana. The avalanche occurred on June 1, and their transportation site has some pretty cool slide-clearing videos. Crazy. Along those lines, snow is being forecast for the North Cascades, with a few inches predicted for Stevens Pass and a couple feet for the Olympics! I guess winter never truly ends...