Swimming in Avalanches
Lightning struck the mountain as the heavens cracked with thunder. Snow and ice burst loose like boiling water, and I was swept down the couloir, a steep gulley plunging down the flank of the mountain. It was a hell of a way to spend a summer vacation.
It was mid-July 1986, and I was in the Wyoming Wind River Range toward the end of a 30-day Wind River Mountaineering Course with NOLS, the world-famous National Outdoor Leadership School. Headquartered on the edge of the range in the cowboy town of Lander, Wyoming, NOLS was the premier outdoor adventure school of my time.
Back then I was considering a career in outdoor adventure and sought the concentrated training in hard skills such as alpine rock climbing and glacier travel with soft skills such as team work and leadership under pressure. Along with those skills NOLS also taught natural history, science in the field, environmental responsibility, wilderness navigation, and backcountry first aid, all knowledge I desired. And, to be sure, as a Virginian what I most wanted was an immersion adventure in the Wild American West. And I got it.
Our expedition was led by a veteran NOLS instructor, Michael “Mike” Collins, a decorated ex-Marine with long blonde hair from New Hampshire who found his soul in the Wyoming wilderness. Mike was assisted by John Toll of Iowa and by Fergus McCormick, who carried a guitar in a blue case lashed to his backpack. I don’t remember where Fergus was from other than he went to Reed College in Oregon. All three young men were remarkable in their own way. To all us students they were superheroes. God-like, even.
Called the Wind Rivers or the Winds for short, these mountains paralleled the Tetons to the West as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Winds are blessed with an abundance of granite that allowed for worldclass climbing. They are remote. Rich in wildlife. The largest concentration of glaciers outside Alaska are there. The Wind Rivers boasted 63 glaciers with 7 of the 10 largest in the continental US. The headwaters of many rivers including the Wind, the Snake (and thus the Columbia), and the Green (and thus the Colorado) originate in those mountains. The lakes and streams were full of big, healthy trout. And this summer was experiencing a delayed winter.
After surviving a hellish blizzard on the Fourth of July in subzero temperatures, we continued our off-trail traverse of the Winds from the northeast to southwest. After another fierce storm cleared the skies we successfully summitted Gannett Peak on the 12th of July. At 13,804 ft Gannett is the highest mountain in Wyoming, even taller than its more famous neighbor the Grand Teton.
By July 14 we arrived at Bull Lake Glacier atop a wide plateau. There around 12,120 feet our group set up camp. Across from us to the west was Indian Pass, which looked steep and slick with a cloak of heavier than usual late-season snow and ice. To our right the northern gate was guarded by Jackson Peak at 13,517 ft. We actually had to descend off Bull Lake Glacier to the base before climbing it. South to our left an unnamed tower of rock pierced the sky. It looked steeper and more challenging than Jackson Peak, although not as tall, and a group of us wanted to bag it.
Our course broke into rotating small groups over the next couple days and we did day climbs with ice axes and had science classes in the fields. One day the mini-group I was in climbed and summitted Jackson Peak. We actually had to descend off Bull Lake Glacier to the base before climbing it. The ascent was primarily a wickedly steep snow slog. One step at a time with each plunge of the ice ax shaft. At one point we had to chop steps out of the ice, which was a bit nerve wracking. It wasn’t a severe climb by any means, but the exposure was deadly. And it was a cool climb except that visibility was bad with rapid changes in weather. Another climb of nearby Fremont Peak was aborted when a storm hit us part-way up.
July 16, 1986 found my small group following John Toll down off the glacier to climb the unnamed peak. There were three of us students: me, Ray, and Laura. They were characters, too. Ray was a jovial older guy built like a bear who declared himself an avowed Marxist from New England. Laura was younger than me but became famous on our expedition for going snow blind. She refused to wear her glacier goggles one day because she didn’t like the way she looked and went blind. It was our fault, too, because no one caught it until it was too late. Her eyes healed from placing warm tea bags upon them. Took a day and a half. Today, though, she could see fine.
Iowa John led us over to the base of the mesa-like rock tower just south of Indian Pass. We had to have a name for this nameless – at least on the map – mountain. As John hailed from the rolling flats of Iowa, he flippantly called out “Iowa Peak!” And the rest us of embraced the oxymoron with laughs and shouts. “Yeah!” we cried out in agreement, “Iowa Peak!”
The three of us students arrived with John at the base of Iowa. We were clearly not the first climbers. In fact we were a little shocked at the quantity of human feces clumped among the rocks. With a wry grin, John launched into a brief lecture on minimum impact ethics.
“Well, whaddaya do out here?” one of us asked. “You can’t dig a cat hole in all these rocks.”
“Pull up a rock, shit in the hole, then cover it up,” John said. “If you absolutely have to shit on top the ground, then cover it up with rocks. Even better, smear your shit around first. Preferably with flat rocks.”
We nodded in agreement. All of us have been out in the field too long to say “Ew.”
After a debate on the best configuration for rope teams for the four of us, we decided to do the unusual and put all four on us on a single rope. We had a mix of skill levels and abilities, and decided the whole group would move faster this way. Off we went, clawing our way up a multi-pitch rock climb with helmets and backpacks with ice axes strapped on.
July 16 had dawned blue and clear. We were all excited, even eager, for climbing this tower represented a true unknown. Yet all four of us remained relatively calm and matter-of-fact. Being out in the field for so long had matured us with a certain wisdom. And, to be honest, we were all tired. And we were focused and upbeat anyway.
It’s been almost 23 years now as I write. I can’t remember if we took turns swinging leads, or for the sake of speed we all stayed clipped into the rope in the same order we began. I can’t remember if I was the lead climber or the second. I know Laura was usually in the middle and John the Instructor stayed tied in at the end. At the end of each pitch we would regroup briefly on little ledges. The views across the mountains and valleys were spectacular. But it was too scary to dig out my camera. My camera was an old Canon AES-1 and was deemed a bit heavy for this trip.
We grunted over big rocks and shimmed up little handholds. We tiptoed and shoved, pulled and laughed, scraped our helmets against rock, and laughed and farted. We handled our rope systems as seasoned experts, belaying, placing pro, removing pro, slinging gear.
Half-way up Iowa the storm hit. Within moments we were enveloped in swirling wet clouds. Visibility dropped away. Snow fell, first as soft flakes, but faster and harder as frozen white pellets. We had the beginnings of a whiteout.
Our team came to a halt on a ledge to consider the situation. The rocks were getting wet and our hands were cold and getting colder. Climbing in soggy mittens over slick wet stone did not appeal to us. Should we start downclimbing and rappelling off? Hold up and wait it out hoping it’s just a brief, passing storm? John called the decision quickly.
“The fastest way down is climb up to the top and glissade down that couloir we saw on the other side of the peak,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Quietly with renewed focus we pushed ahead, helping each other as needed. At this point we didn’t care about climbing in good style such as not cheating with our knees as much as we cared about getting safely back to base camp. The snow fell harder. Distant thunder rumbled.
With a grim satisfaction I hauled myself up onto the summit of the mountain and stood up. Ray and Laura were soon at my side. Then John Toll popped up, short and elf-like in the storm and radiating confidence. He seemed to relish the challenge. Ray and I nodded. We knew it would make a good story. Laura just grinned and took a drink.
“Iowa Peak!” we all shouted. “Woohoo! We made it!”
“Not yet,” our NOLS Instructor replied drolly. “Once we’ve all returned to base camp then you can say that.”
The storm seemed to clear briefly as clouds swirled open. Snow scattered in the breeze. It was cold. And yet I felt strangely jubilant and just a bit anxious. Something didn’t feel right. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I brushed it aside as simply fear of the unknown. We took a quick break to eat and drink, add layers, and coil the ropes. And take summit pictures, of course.
“Time to go,” said John.
We got out our ice axes, slung on our backpacks, and then slid the rope coils over our head. To speed things up I took two ropes, coiled like circles in the classic mountaineer style, and threw them criss-cross over my trunk. I looked like a guerrilla chieftain with two rolls of bandoliers. My goodness, they were heavy. But I was strong and in great shape. Together we marched over the summit, had to downclimb over wet rocks a bit, and soon found ourselves standing at the head of a long skinny couloir filled with snow. We could see all the way to the bottom where it ran out into Indian Pass. I shivered with a mix of fear and pleasure as I felt the call of adventure and the challenge of the moment.
“Dudley,” John called out, using my middle name which was what I went by back in those years. “You’re the second most experienced one here. I want you to stay back and take sweep.”
Ray and Laura were fine with that. They’ve had very little outdoor experience before taking this NOLS Mountaineering Course. But they knew how to self-arrest with their ice-axes should they glissade out of control.
“We’re going to glissade all the way down. Stay in control,” John said. “I’m going first. Then you, Laura. Next, you, Ray. Spread out a little so you don’t get on top of one another too fast. It’s a long ways down but not too bad. Faster than setting up anchors and rappelling down wet rocks, that’s for sure. After Ray, it’s you, Dudley.”
“OK, let’s go,” Ray said.
“Any questions?” asked John.
“No,” Laura shook her head.
I nodded the all-OK. The snow was falling much harder now and the wind was gusting through the Pass between Iowa and Jackson Peaks.
John stepped off the rocks onto the snow at the top of the chute, sat down while gripping his ice axe to steer by, then scooted off. He masterfully shot on down the mountain and soon was at the bottom. He stood up, shouted, and waved. Laura went next. She scooted and stopped, shuddered and scuttered, then away she went, zipping down the snow with a yell. Soon she was standing up next to John and wiping snow off her pants. Ray, a big guy, jumped on with macho gusto, turned around and gave me a grin. We nodded at each other, the tired equivalent of thumbs up, and off he went. Ray glissaded down the ravine toward Laura and John. Sometimes he went too slowly, then too fast, bouncing a bit toward the end, skittering to a halt in a spray of snow. My turn.
The couloir didn’t seem all that long, or steep, but once I sat down atop the snow it felt very long and steep. For a moment I felt fear. Then I took a deep breath. This was what I lived for. Adventure! Adventure in the wilderness! Doing things few people ever get to do! Yeah!
The couloir went straight down then bent right to left like a dog’s leg before straightening out again. The edge of the dogleg was marked by a thin rim of rocks that dropped steeply over cliffs. More snow fell and the clouds grew darker and stormier. It was time to push off, and I did.
Lightening struck the mountain at that moment. Thunder boomed as if a giant pounded heavy war drums. Snow exploded around me and before I knew exactly what was happening I was being swept down the mountain.
Avalanche!
The snow seemed to boil up and liquefy. I was head up, feet down, and shooting straight toward the edge of the cliffs in the bend of the dogleg. I could see snow shooting up to spill over the cliffs. And I did not want to get blown over those rocks.
Quickly I turned over as I’ve been trained to do on a stable mountainside and self-arrested with my ice axe. Except this mountainside was moving. Bad idea. I just sank down into the snow. It continued to carry me down the mountain. After a second or third attempt I gave up in frustration and then had a brilliant insight.
An avalanche is essentially a river of snow washing down the mountain. I was also a whitewater kayaker. If a paddler ends up coming out of the boat, there was a specific way to swim whitewater rapids. You floated on your back, arms outstretched backpaddling to slow yourself down, head upstream to protect it from smashing into rocks, and your feet pointing downstream to avoid foot entrapment and to kick-bounce off boulders. The lifejacket would protect your spine.
So I rolled over onto my back and began backpaddling with my arms, still gripping my ice axe in one hand. I rose back up and floated on top the moving snow as I got swept down the mountain.
All thought was crystal clear. No praying or screaming or looking back or second guessing. Just instinct and intelligence working together in perfect pitch. Responding to what is. My priority was to swim the avalanche and stay on top to keep from being buried. Stay on top, swim, stay on top, swim, stay on top, stay on top.
Suddenly I came to a stop. The avalanche had carried me about 200 feet down the mountain. I did not go over the cliffs. Everything was quiet. Silent. I was buried up to my chest, but my feet were not far from the surface. Heavy boots weighed them down. For a moment I sat absolutely still, afraid to move, concerned that any movement would trigger another slide. Little trickles of snow began to roll and slide down the chute all around me.
“Get down here now!” John shouted up at me.
“Come on!” Ray shouted.
“Hurry!” Laura shouted.
“Now!” John ordered. “Quickly!”
I wiggled loose and fought my way free. Fortunately, the snow was a mix of powder and clumps, so I got out quickly. In a blur of action I moved down and out of the main slide, a big pile of loose snow, and glissaded the rest of the way down. In no time at all I was at the bottom. I stood up, shaken but feeling a little bit like Superman with those two climbing ropes coiled across my chest.
“Are you alright?”
“Man, you don’t know how lucky you are!”
“Good thing lightening didn’t strike you!”
“Did you see that lightening bolt?”
“Uh...you realize you have a metal ice axe in your hand, right?”
The questions came fast and furious from Ray and Laura. Another rumble of thunder boomed through the Pass.
“Let’s get outa here!” John said.
We had to get out of the way of the couloir and back to camp. Halfway to camp the storm turned ugly. Thunder cracked every few minutes and the ground shook. Lightening struck all around us. I imagined rocks exploding. Flashes of light lit up the clouds. Snow fell in wild, crazy flurries. Lightening flashed so much around us we could see the electricity crackling through the air. It reminded me of hot afternoon thunderstorms back in Virginia, but I felt as if we were in the midst of an artillery bombardment.
The storm raged after we got back to camp. Eventually it cleared, and we awoke to a beautiful, clear day. Our entire NOLS course was scheduled to cross over through Indian Pass to the other side of Titcomb Lakes this day. After we broke camp, packed up, and began a long trudge up to the top of Indian Pass, someone shouted out. Maybe it was John Toll.
“Hey, look over there,” I remember someone pointing out. “Over at the base of Iowa Peak.”
“What?” I asked as I squinted across the way, looking at where the avalanche occurred.
“You are so lucky. We are all so lucky. See, the entire couloir slid clean during the middle of the night.”
My eyes followed the pointed finger. Indeed, the couloir appeared swept half clean. A mound of snow stood piled up at the bottom against a ring of boulders. Apparently during the peak of the storm more thunder and lightening had triggered another and much bigger avalanche. Big enough to not only kill me but bury my companions at the bottom. There would have been little hope in successfully digging people out under such remote and stormy conditions.
“My” avalanche was a relatively small and narrow one. Instead of an enormous shelf or slab cracking away from the flanks of some gargantuan mountain, it was basically a snow slide in a gully. Technically speaking in the vernacular of climbing I was in a “loose snow avalanche,” one that starts small at the top then grows bigger and wider as it descends the mountain like a growing waterfall. It was my first and only true avalanche.
I was lucky in a number of ways. For instance, the fact the snow was Rocky Mountain powder. Years later I got caught in a little snow slide on a winter climb on Red Mountain in the Washington Cascades. I was stuck up to my knees and hips in what local mountaineers dubbed “Cascade concrete,” wet, heavy snow that traps you and is difficult to escape from. According to my old Seattle Mountaineer climbing notes, most avalanches occur on 38 degree slopes, and 50% of all avalanche deaths are climbers (although they’re roughly the 5th cause of death among mountaineers, with simple falling being number one.).
All of us stared across the way at the avalanche chute on Iowa Peak as we slogged up Indian Pass. It was a solemn reminder that in the backcountry anything could happen. Anything. Such as later on that day I and two other guys unwittingly and unknowingly walked out onto a frozen lake covered in snow only to feel our weight drop with a muffled crack. That, however, is another story.
William Dudley Bass
May 15, 2009
© 2009 by William Dudley Bass
It was mid-July 1986, and I was in the Wyoming Wind River Range toward the end of a 30-day Wind River Mountaineering Course with NOLS, the world-famous National Outdoor Leadership School. Headquartered on the edge of the range in the cowboy town of Lander, Wyoming, NOLS was the premier outdoor adventure school of my time.
Back then I was considering a career in outdoor adventure and sought the concentrated training in hard skills such as alpine rock climbing and glacier travel with soft skills such as team work and leadership under pressure. Along with those skills NOLS also taught natural history, science in the field, environmental responsibility, wilderness navigation, and backcountry first aid, all knowledge I desired. And, to be sure, as a Virginian what I most wanted was an immersion adventure in the Wild American West. And I got it.
Our expedition was led by a veteran NOLS instructor, Michael “Mike” Collins, a decorated ex-Marine with long blonde hair from New Hampshire who found his soul in the Wyoming wilderness. Mike was assisted by John Toll of Iowa and by Fergus McCormick, who carried a guitar in a blue case lashed to his backpack. I don’t remember where Fergus was from other than he went to Reed College in Oregon. All three young men were remarkable in their own way. To all us students they were superheroes. God-like, even.
Called the Wind Rivers or the Winds for short, these mountains paralleled the Tetons to the West as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Winds are blessed with an abundance of granite that allowed for worldclass climbing. They are remote. Rich in wildlife. The largest concentration of glaciers outside Alaska are there. The Wind Rivers boasted 63 glaciers with 7 of the 10 largest in the continental US. The headwaters of many rivers including the Wind, the Snake (and thus the Columbia), and the Green (and thus the Colorado) originate in those mountains. The lakes and streams were full of big, healthy trout. And this summer was experiencing a delayed winter.
After surviving a hellish blizzard on the Fourth of July in subzero temperatures, we continued our off-trail traverse of the Winds from the northeast to southwest. After another fierce storm cleared the skies we successfully summitted Gannett Peak on the 12th of July. At 13,804 ft Gannett is the highest mountain in Wyoming, even taller than its more famous neighbor the Grand Teton.
By July 14 we arrived at Bull Lake Glacier atop a wide plateau. There around 12,120 feet our group set up camp. Across from us to the west was Indian Pass, which looked steep and slick with a cloak of heavier than usual late-season snow and ice. To our right the northern gate was guarded by Jackson Peak at 13,517 ft. We actually had to descend off Bull Lake Glacier to the base before climbing it. South to our left an unnamed tower of rock pierced the sky. It looked steeper and more challenging than Jackson Peak, although not as tall, and a group of us wanted to bag it.
Our course broke into rotating small groups over the next couple days and we did day climbs with ice axes and had science classes in the fields. One day the mini-group I was in climbed and summitted Jackson Peak. We actually had to descend off Bull Lake Glacier to the base before climbing it. The ascent was primarily a wickedly steep snow slog. One step at a time with each plunge of the ice ax shaft. At one point we had to chop steps out of the ice, which was a bit nerve wracking. It wasn’t a severe climb by any means, but the exposure was deadly. And it was a cool climb except that visibility was bad with rapid changes in weather. Another climb of nearby Fremont Peak was aborted when a storm hit us part-way up.
July 16, 1986 found my small group following John Toll down off the glacier to climb the unnamed peak. There were three of us students: me, Ray, and Laura. They were characters, too. Ray was a jovial older guy built like a bear who declared himself an avowed Marxist from New England. Laura was younger than me but became famous on our expedition for going snow blind. She refused to wear her glacier goggles one day because she didn’t like the way she looked and went blind. It was our fault, too, because no one caught it until it was too late. Her eyes healed from placing warm tea bags upon them. Took a day and a half. Today, though, she could see fine.
Iowa John led us over to the base of the mesa-like rock tower just south of Indian Pass. We had to have a name for this nameless – at least on the map – mountain. As John hailed from the rolling flats of Iowa, he flippantly called out “Iowa Peak!” And the rest us of embraced the oxymoron with laughs and shouts. “Yeah!” we cried out in agreement, “Iowa Peak!”
The three of us students arrived with John at the base of Iowa. We were clearly not the first climbers. In fact we were a little shocked at the quantity of human feces clumped among the rocks. With a wry grin, John launched into a brief lecture on minimum impact ethics.
“Well, whaddaya do out here?” one of us asked. “You can’t dig a cat hole in all these rocks.”
“Pull up a rock, shit in the hole, then cover it up,” John said. “If you absolutely have to shit on top the ground, then cover it up with rocks. Even better, smear your shit around first. Preferably with flat rocks.”
We nodded in agreement. All of us have been out in the field too long to say “Ew.”
After a debate on the best configuration for rope teams for the four of us, we decided to do the unusual and put all four on us on a single rope. We had a mix of skill levels and abilities, and decided the whole group would move faster this way. Off we went, clawing our way up a multi-pitch rock climb with helmets and backpacks with ice axes strapped on.
July 16 had dawned blue and clear. We were all excited, even eager, for climbing this tower represented a true unknown. Yet all four of us remained relatively calm and matter-of-fact. Being out in the field for so long had matured us with a certain wisdom. And, to be honest, we were all tired. And we were focused and upbeat anyway.
It’s been almost 23 years now as I write. I can’t remember if we took turns swinging leads, or for the sake of speed we all stayed clipped into the rope in the same order we began. I can’t remember if I was the lead climber or the second. I know Laura was usually in the middle and John the Instructor stayed tied in at the end. At the end of each pitch we would regroup briefly on little ledges. The views across the mountains and valleys were spectacular. But it was too scary to dig out my camera. My camera was an old Canon AES-1 and was deemed a bit heavy for this trip.
We grunted over big rocks and shimmed up little handholds. We tiptoed and shoved, pulled and laughed, scraped our helmets against rock, and laughed and farted. We handled our rope systems as seasoned experts, belaying, placing pro, removing pro, slinging gear.
Half-way up Iowa the storm hit. Within moments we were enveloped in swirling wet clouds. Visibility dropped away. Snow fell, first as soft flakes, but faster and harder as frozen white pellets. We had the beginnings of a whiteout.
Our team came to a halt on a ledge to consider the situation. The rocks were getting wet and our hands were cold and getting colder. Climbing in soggy mittens over slick wet stone did not appeal to us. Should we start downclimbing and rappelling off? Hold up and wait it out hoping it’s just a brief, passing storm? John called the decision quickly.
“The fastest way down is climb up to the top and glissade down that couloir we saw on the other side of the peak,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Quietly with renewed focus we pushed ahead, helping each other as needed. At this point we didn’t care about climbing in good style such as not cheating with our knees as much as we cared about getting safely back to base camp. The snow fell harder. Distant thunder rumbled.
With a grim satisfaction I hauled myself up onto the summit of the mountain and stood up. Ray and Laura were soon at my side. Then John Toll popped up, short and elf-like in the storm and radiating confidence. He seemed to relish the challenge. Ray and I nodded. We knew it would make a good story. Laura just grinned and took a drink.
“Iowa Peak!” we all shouted. “Woohoo! We made it!”
“Not yet,” our NOLS Instructor replied drolly. “Once we’ve all returned to base camp then you can say that.”
The storm seemed to clear briefly as clouds swirled open. Snow scattered in the breeze. It was cold. And yet I felt strangely jubilant and just a bit anxious. Something didn’t feel right. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I brushed it aside as simply fear of the unknown. We took a quick break to eat and drink, add layers, and coil the ropes. And take summit pictures, of course.
“Time to go,” said John.
We got out our ice axes, slung on our backpacks, and then slid the rope coils over our head. To speed things up I took two ropes, coiled like circles in the classic mountaineer style, and threw them criss-cross over my trunk. I looked like a guerrilla chieftain with two rolls of bandoliers. My goodness, they were heavy. But I was strong and in great shape. Together we marched over the summit, had to downclimb over wet rocks a bit, and soon found ourselves standing at the head of a long skinny couloir filled with snow. We could see all the way to the bottom where it ran out into Indian Pass. I shivered with a mix of fear and pleasure as I felt the call of adventure and the challenge of the moment.
“Dudley,” John called out, using my middle name which was what I went by back in those years. “You’re the second most experienced one here. I want you to stay back and take sweep.”
Ray and Laura were fine with that. They’ve had very little outdoor experience before taking this NOLS Mountaineering Course. But they knew how to self-arrest with their ice-axes should they glissade out of control.
“We’re going to glissade all the way down. Stay in control,” John said. “I’m going first. Then you, Laura. Next, you, Ray. Spread out a little so you don’t get on top of one another too fast. It’s a long ways down but not too bad. Faster than setting up anchors and rappelling down wet rocks, that’s for sure. After Ray, it’s you, Dudley.”
“OK, let’s go,” Ray said.
“Any questions?” asked John.
“No,” Laura shook her head.
I nodded the all-OK. The snow was falling much harder now and the wind was gusting through the Pass between Iowa and Jackson Peaks.
John stepped off the rocks onto the snow at the top of the chute, sat down while gripping his ice axe to steer by, then scooted off. He masterfully shot on down the mountain and soon was at the bottom. He stood up, shouted, and waved. Laura went next. She scooted and stopped, shuddered and scuttered, then away she went, zipping down the snow with a yell. Soon she was standing up next to John and wiping snow off her pants. Ray, a big guy, jumped on with macho gusto, turned around and gave me a grin. We nodded at each other, the tired equivalent of thumbs up, and off he went. Ray glissaded down the ravine toward Laura and John. Sometimes he went too slowly, then too fast, bouncing a bit toward the end, skittering to a halt in a spray of snow. My turn.
The couloir didn’t seem all that long, or steep, but once I sat down atop the snow it felt very long and steep. For a moment I felt fear. Then I took a deep breath. This was what I lived for. Adventure! Adventure in the wilderness! Doing things few people ever get to do! Yeah!
The couloir went straight down then bent right to left like a dog’s leg before straightening out again. The edge of the dogleg was marked by a thin rim of rocks that dropped steeply over cliffs. More snow fell and the clouds grew darker and stormier. It was time to push off, and I did.
Lightening struck the mountain at that moment. Thunder boomed as if a giant pounded heavy war drums. Snow exploded around me and before I knew exactly what was happening I was being swept down the mountain.
Avalanche!
The snow seemed to boil up and liquefy. I was head up, feet down, and shooting straight toward the edge of the cliffs in the bend of the dogleg. I could see snow shooting up to spill over the cliffs. And I did not want to get blown over those rocks.
Quickly I turned over as I’ve been trained to do on a stable mountainside and self-arrested with my ice axe. Except this mountainside was moving. Bad idea. I just sank down into the snow. It continued to carry me down the mountain. After a second or third attempt I gave up in frustration and then had a brilliant insight.
An avalanche is essentially a river of snow washing down the mountain. I was also a whitewater kayaker. If a paddler ends up coming out of the boat, there was a specific way to swim whitewater rapids. You floated on your back, arms outstretched backpaddling to slow yourself down, head upstream to protect it from smashing into rocks, and your feet pointing downstream to avoid foot entrapment and to kick-bounce off boulders. The lifejacket would protect your spine.
So I rolled over onto my back and began backpaddling with my arms, still gripping my ice axe in one hand. I rose back up and floated on top the moving snow as I got swept down the mountain.
All thought was crystal clear. No praying or screaming or looking back or second guessing. Just instinct and intelligence working together in perfect pitch. Responding to what is. My priority was to swim the avalanche and stay on top to keep from being buried. Stay on top, swim, stay on top, swim, stay on top, stay on top.
Suddenly I came to a stop. The avalanche had carried me about 200 feet down the mountain. I did not go over the cliffs. Everything was quiet. Silent. I was buried up to my chest, but my feet were not far from the surface. Heavy boots weighed them down. For a moment I sat absolutely still, afraid to move, concerned that any movement would trigger another slide. Little trickles of snow began to roll and slide down the chute all around me.
“Get down here now!” John shouted up at me.
“Come on!” Ray shouted.
“Hurry!” Laura shouted.
“Now!” John ordered. “Quickly!”
I wiggled loose and fought my way free. Fortunately, the snow was a mix of powder and clumps, so I got out quickly. In a blur of action I moved down and out of the main slide, a big pile of loose snow, and glissaded the rest of the way down. In no time at all I was at the bottom. I stood up, shaken but feeling a little bit like Superman with those two climbing ropes coiled across my chest.
“Are you alright?”
“Man, you don’t know how lucky you are!”
“Good thing lightening didn’t strike you!”
“Did you see that lightening bolt?”
“Uh...you realize you have a metal ice axe in your hand, right?”
The questions came fast and furious from Ray and Laura. Another rumble of thunder boomed through the Pass.
“Let’s get outa here!” John said.
We had to get out of the way of the couloir and back to camp. Halfway to camp the storm turned ugly. Thunder cracked every few minutes and the ground shook. Lightening struck all around us. I imagined rocks exploding. Flashes of light lit up the clouds. Snow fell in wild, crazy flurries. Lightening flashed so much around us we could see the electricity crackling through the air. It reminded me of hot afternoon thunderstorms back in Virginia, but I felt as if we were in the midst of an artillery bombardment.
The storm raged after we got back to camp. Eventually it cleared, and we awoke to a beautiful, clear day. Our entire NOLS course was scheduled to cross over through Indian Pass to the other side of Titcomb Lakes this day. After we broke camp, packed up, and began a long trudge up to the top of Indian Pass, someone shouted out. Maybe it was John Toll.
“Hey, look over there,” I remember someone pointing out. “Over at the base of Iowa Peak.”
“What?” I asked as I squinted across the way, looking at where the avalanche occurred.
“You are so lucky. We are all so lucky. See, the entire couloir slid clean during the middle of the night.”
My eyes followed the pointed finger. Indeed, the couloir appeared swept half clean. A mound of snow stood piled up at the bottom against a ring of boulders. Apparently during the peak of the storm more thunder and lightening had triggered another and much bigger avalanche. Big enough to not only kill me but bury my companions at the bottom. There would have been little hope in successfully digging people out under such remote and stormy conditions.
“My” avalanche was a relatively small and narrow one. Instead of an enormous shelf or slab cracking away from the flanks of some gargantuan mountain, it was basically a snow slide in a gully. Technically speaking in the vernacular of climbing I was in a “loose snow avalanche,” one that starts small at the top then grows bigger and wider as it descends the mountain like a growing waterfall. It was my first and only true avalanche.
I was lucky in a number of ways. For instance, the fact the snow was Rocky Mountain powder. Years later I got caught in a little snow slide on a winter climb on Red Mountain in the Washington Cascades. I was stuck up to my knees and hips in what local mountaineers dubbed “Cascade concrete,” wet, heavy snow that traps you and is difficult to escape from. According to my old Seattle Mountaineer climbing notes, most avalanches occur on 38 degree slopes, and 50% of all avalanche deaths are climbers (although they’re roughly the 5th cause of death among mountaineers, with simple falling being number one.).
All of us stared across the way at the avalanche chute on Iowa Peak as we slogged up Indian Pass. It was a solemn reminder that in the backcountry anything could happen. Anything. Such as later on that day I and two other guys unwittingly and unknowingly walked out onto a frozen lake covered in snow only to feel our weight drop with a muffled crack. That, however, is another story.
William Dudley Bass
May 15, 2009
© 2009 by William Dudley Bass
Labels: from NOLS Wind River Mountaineering Course June-July 1986
posted by William Dudley Bass at 11:13 AM
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