Photo by Mark Meschinelli

A telemark skier descends a slide on the south side of Colden.

AVALANCHE!

The risk is real

By Phil Brown

Peter Gough visited the Adirondacks only once in his life, many years ago, but he’ll never forget the place. He almost died in an avalanche.
A native of New Zealand, Gough drove up from Rochester in March 1975 to go ice climbing with two other men on a cliff near Chapel Pond. It had snowed heavily the previous night.

“The big mistake was to be so keen to get out into the hills,” Gough told the Explorer. “I didn’t think about what were normal snow conditions. I had only been in the U.S. a month or two and just assumed the snow in Keene Valley was like that all winter.”

Gough and his two partners had scaled the steepest parts of the mountain face and were traversing easier terrain toward a ridge when a 100-by-70-foot slab of wind-packed snow broke loose. Gough, who was in the lead, tried using his ice ax to stop himself, but to no avail. “The whole slab was moving with me on top of it,” he said. “No technique, however well applied, would have helped.”

He recalls being flipped and bouncing off icy ledges. He and his companions were still roped together and might have hurtled to the bottom of the 600-foot cliff if three other climbers had not been coming up behind them. Gough’s rope wrapped around one of the other climbers, 18-year-old Barbara Wilt.

“A loop of my rope caught round her foot,” he said. “This went up her back and over her shoulder, and I was hanging off. Her foot was up behind her shoulder blade. I was staggered to find out later she broke or dislocated nothing.”

Gough said his companions were not hanging off him, so he assumes their ropes snagged on something else. “What, I have no idea,” he said. “I know but for the girl and the loop of rope I would have hit the ground.”

A passing motorist noticed all the climbers dangling from the mountain, far above the ground. Gary Hodgson, a retired forest ranger, believes the climbers would have been killed if their fall had not been broken.

“The chances of anybody coming down the whole thing and surviving—it would have to be divine guidance,” he said.
As it was, one of Gough’s partners broke his skull, spine and pelvis and punctured a lung. The other suffered spinal injuries and, according to Gough, “came right after many, many years in a frame.” Gough escaped with just a broken leg and was climbing again 10 months later in Patagonia.

Now 56, Gough said the avalanche didn’t change his life. He is an engineer who conducts research and teaches at a university in New Zealand. When the Explorer contacted him, he was on sabbatical, climbing volcanoes in Mexico. “I lost a bit of self-confidence for a while,” he said. “It is a bit sobering to realize you are not immortal.”

The snow slide that almost killed Peter Gough is one of at least 15 avalanches that have occurred in the Adirondacks in recent decades. A week later, in fact, an avalanche on Macomb Mountain carried a snowshoer 500 feet and nearly buried him alive. Yet few of the ice climbers, snowshoers and backcountry skiers who frequent the Adirondacks know about this avalanche history. Most of the incidents received little or no publicity. Most were not even reported to authorities.

The only Adirondack avalanche that people are apt to know about occurred on Wright Peak in February 2000. It killed one backcountry skier, 27-year-old Toma Vracarich, and injured three others—the region’s first and so far only avalanche fatality. The story appeared in many newspapers, including the New York Times, and was picked up by the Associated Press. Soon afterward, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) published a leaflet on avalanche preparedness. The following winter, the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) started offering more avalanche instruction.
Vracarich’s death alerted Adirondack skiers to the danger of open slopes in the backcountry. “Up until that time, people had the attitude, ‘We’ve never had an avalanche. It can’t happen here,’” said Tony Goodwin, author of ADK’s Ski and Snowshoe Trails in the Adirondacks. “Now no one is discounting it.”

Nevertheless, veteran skiers say they rarely see their fellow backcountry travelers toting the three essentials of avalanche gear: snow shovel, metal probe and a transceiver (or beacon) that sends and detects electronic signals. Such equipment can cost several hundred dollars.

“People have short memories,” said Ed Palen, owner of Adirondack Rock & River, a guide service in Keene. “There’s a slightly greater awareness that avalanches do happen here, but people are still out there skiing the slides.”

The slides are steep slopes largely devoid of trees. They are created by torrential rains that wash soil and vegetation down the mountain, leaving a streak of raw rock. Although such storms are rare, they have occurred often enough to leave skiable slides on many of the High Peaks and on some lower mountains. Since most Adirondack peaks stop short of treeline, backcountry skiers prize these open slopes as a chance to make turns in unbroken snow.

The rub is that the slope of virtually all the skiable slides lies between 30 and 38 degrees, according to Forest Ranger James Giglinto, who patrols the High Peaks. As DEC’s leaflet points out, 90% of avalanches occur on slopes of 30 to 45 degrees. The most dangerous pitch appears to be 37 or 38 degrees.

In decades past, few people outside a clique of adventurous souls known as the Ski to Die Club dared to tackle the slides. Using ordinary cross-country gear in the 1970s and 1980s, this elite bunch helped expand the Adirondacks’ idea of skiable. They carved up the slides, shot down frozen streambeds and slalomed through hardwood glades. These days, such terrain is no longer the exclusive domain of experts. Thanks to improvements in backcountry equipment—wider, shaped skis, stronger bindings, plastic boots—more and more intermediate skiers are venturing off trail. Over the past decade, Giglinto has seen a steady rise in the number of skiers heading out to the slides. Many do not carry avalanche gear. He advises those who don’t to ski elsewhere, but not everyone listens.

Is it inevitable that another fatal avalanche will occur? Giglinto answers, “The more people you have skiing these slides, the more you’re rolling the dice.”
The region’s avalanche history seems to bear this out. The Explorer has compiled a list of 15 avalanches that have occurred since 1975. All but two were triggered by humans—10 by ice climbers or snowshoers and three by skiers. All three involving skiers happened on slides, and the first did not occur until 1997.

Gary Marchuk, a Lake Placid guide, was caught in that avalanche. He and several friends were skiing Mount Colden’s West Ramp when one of them fell and loosened a 30-by-30-foot slab. Marchuk and another skier were swept down the slope, but fortunately the slab ran into some trees before it had a chance to pick up momentum. Otherwise they might have been carried all the way to Avalanche Lake. Marchuk was pinned against a tree and half-buried, but he was able to dig himself out and continue skiing. Since then, he has been trained in avalanche detection and rescue, and he now brings a beacon, probe and shovel when venturing into avalanche terrain. “We consider ourselves lucky that day,” Marchuk said. “It was a wakeup call for me.”

For some others, the awakening came three years later when Toma Vracarich died on Wright Peak. None of the skiers that day carried avalanche equipment. Before the Wright disaster, though, virtually no Adirondack skiers did.

Ron Konowitz, one of the survivors of Wright, had been skiing slides in the High Peaks for 15 years and had never witnessed anything like what happened that day. Once in a while he might see “a little slough” of loose snow, but that’s about it. “We never expected to have an avalanche in the Adirondacks,” said Konowitz, a Keene schoolteacher.

Konowitz and his wife, Lauren, who broke several bones and fractured her skull in the avalanche, have not skied any of the backcountry slides since the accident. If they do so again, they plan to bring rescue equipment. And they advise others to do the same. “Be smart,” Lauren said. “Treat it like you’re skiing out West, where avalanches happen all the time.”

Mark Meschinelli, one of the founders of the Ski to Die Club, isn’t heeding that advice. He regards the Wright avalanche as something of a fluke, the result of an unusually prolonged cold spell followed by heavy snowfall. “It made everybody open their eyes, of course, but I really think it was a unique thing with the weather conditions,” he said. “That may not slide again for 20 years.”

Although he doesn’t carry a beacon, probe or shovel, Meschinelli doesn’t ignore the avalanche risk. All winter, he follows the weather patterns and checks snow conditions, and when he skis a slide, he usually sticks to the edges, where it’s safer. As for assessing the danger, he said, “I go by my gut feeling.”

Like Ron Konowitz, one of his backcountry buddies, Meschinelli has skied most of the slides. He has witnessed two avalanches, but both occurred while he was ice climbing, not skiing. The first was a minor incident on Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain more than 20 years ago: He and friends were nearing the end of their ascent when the blow of an ice ax broke loose a 30-foot slab. Since it was off to their side, no one felt endangered.

The second was more serious. In April 1990, Meschinelli hiked by himself to the North Face of Gothics, a favorite destination of ice climbers. He arrived at the base of the steep wall during a snowstorm. “I heard this low rumbling, hissing sound,” he recounted. “I looked up, and the whole face is moving toward me. There was nothing I could do, no place to go. I got buried up to my waist.” Although he was “packed in pretty tight,” Meschinelli extricated himself and climbed the freshly cleared slope. During the ascent, a different part of the North Face avalanched.

Ed Palen of Rock & River recalls another natural avalanche on the North Face. In the mid-1990s, he and another guide went there with a group of ice-climbing students. It was a warm day after a snowfall. Before reaching the base of the cliff, the guides assessed the avalanche risk and decided to turn back. As they were discussing their decision with the students, Palen said, “we saw the snow fracture. It seemed like it was happening in slow motion. Then the whole face of Gothics just started to slide from about three-quarters of the way up. There was just tons and tons of snow.” If the group had been ice climbing at the time, he said, someone might have been killed.

Granted that avalanches do occur in the Adirondacks, how great is the risk? Judging by the raw data, it might seem small, at least compared with the dangers in the West. In Colorado, for example, there were 2,372 avalanches last winter. All told, 84 people were caught, 11 were buried, 29 were partly buried, 13 were injured and 6 were killed.

The statistical disparity is easy to explain. Colorado, with its peaks rising way above treeline, has far more avalanche-prone slopes than the Adirondacks. Also, far more people ski and climb in Colorado’s avalanche terrain, which is easily accessible as well as abundant.

Jim Frankenfield, who founded the CyberSpace Avalanche Center, said Colorado’s climate adds to the danger. Located mid-continent, the state receives dry snowfalls. Because dry snow does not bond as well as wet snow, he said, it’s more likely to slide. The maritime climate of the Adirondacks tends to produce wetter snowfalls.

Nevertheless, Frankenfield warned that backcountry recreationists should not take too much comfort in the relatively small number of avalanches in the Adirondacks. That may reflect a lack of use more than anything else. “Because the slides haven’t been skied that much, it’s hard to say how often the hazard is considerable,” he said.

Nationwide, the number of avalanche fatalities has risen sharply in recent years, paralleling a growing interest in winter sports (including snowmobiling). Last season, 30 people died. If winter recreation continues to grow in the Adirondacks, Frankenfield said, the region can expect to see a corresponding rise in avalanches. According to DEC, there were at least three small avalanches triggered by climbers last winter—on the Chapel Pond cliffs, on a slide on Mount Colden and in the Trap Dike on Colden. No one was hurt, but the next avalanche may not be so forgiving.

Generally, an avalanche requires three ingredients: steep terrain, an unstable snowpack and a trigger. In the Adirondacks, if you’re on a slide or on a slope above treeline you can assume you’re in avalanche terrain. As for the trigger—you’re it. Most avalanches that catch people are caused by people, although (as Ed Palen can attest) slides also can be set off by natural conditions such as a heavy snowfall or rapid warming.

That leaves the snowpack as the only variable. The snowpack may be unstable whenever a weak layer of unconsolidated snow underlies well-bonded snow. An avalanche occurs if the weak layer can no longer support the slab above it. Backcountry travelers often dig snow pits to examine the hidden layers, but the stability of the snowpack can vary from slope to slope and even from one part of a slope to another.

Just as important as digging pits is keeping track of the weather—both on the day you’re in the backcountry and in the weeks beforehand. Long cold spells, rapid warming, solar radiation, strong winds, and snow or rain can all influence the snowpack.

One mistake people make is venturing into avalanche terrain shortly after a heavy snowstorm, when fresh snow has increased the stress on the snowpack. “People really want to ski the powder after a big snow,” Ed Palen said. “That’s when it’s most dangerous.” It’s safer to wait several days to give new snow a chance to settle.

Many of the Adirondack avalanches occurred soon after large snowfalls. On March 15, 1975, three snowshoers headed up a slide on Macomb Mountain the day after a storm dumped six inches of snow on top of an icy crust. When they stopped to rest during the ascent, one of the climbers, Roger Harris, noticed evidence of a snow slide that had occurred overnight. By this time, the sun had come out, warming the fresh snow. They decided to turn around.
Harris began the descent by sliding on his snowshoes. To his surprise, he set off a small avalanche. About the same time, one of the other snowshoers, who had climbed higher than the others, triggered a bigger avalanche that swept Harris down the slope.

“There was not time to be scared; I had a feeling of powerlessness,” recalled Harris, a retired geophysicist who lives in Colorado. “I had been taught that you should swim to the top, but that was impossible as I was tumbling out of control. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion, and I was a helpless observer. I don’t think I ever thought about dying; I was too busy trying to live.”

Harris did manage to push free a little just before the avalanche deposited him in a streambed. He was nearly buried, with just one arm and part of his face protruding above the snow. “I was unable to take in a breath due to the snow jammed down my throat and filling my mouth,” he said, “but I was able to stick two fingers into my mouth and clear the plug. The snow in my throat burned as I gasped a few breaths, and then I fiercely dug with the bare hand to free myself. I tried to shout, but I had no voice at all.”

The companion highest on the mountain triggered two more avalanches on his descent, but neither did any harm. The last was the biggest of the bunch: some 50 feet across and three or four feet deep. Luckily, it flowed down a different route.
Harris lost his ice ax and balaclava, but he escaped unhurt except for a cut on his chin. “I suspect that if I had not been dumped out just before the main mass of snow came to a stop, I could easily have been buried to a depth where Rich and Dick [his friends] would have dug me out in an unconscious state, if in fact they could have located me,” he said. “Perhaps my struggling did help in the end, but who really knows?”

Did the avalanche change his life? Not really, but he did purchase a beacon and shovel.

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