The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Snowboarder caught in Mt. Baldy avalanche
It’s on. Locals are returning from the mountains bragging of early-season face shots. Yeah, we’re getting a hearty blast of winter this week, and hopefully it’s just a teaser of many powder days to come.
So far, we’ve heard reports of great powder skiing—but also received one chilling report of a snowboarder caught in a substantial avalanche. With the arrival of winter conditions comes avalanche hazard, and one Gunnison snowboarder, Drew Eflin, learned that the hard way on Sunday, October 24. Eflin and a group of friends snowmobiled up to Mt. Baldy and parked at Paradise Divide; they started hiking the ridge in high winds. They had no avalanche equipment and weren’t expecting to encounter avalanche hazard with such a shallow snowpack. But as the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) explains, “If there is enough snow to ride there is enough snow to slide.”
“We started hiking around noon—the whole bowl was in a cloud,” Eflin recalled. “We were there a day before and hiked about halfway up. It was a little thin, but we saw tracks up higher in the bowl.
“We got up into the cloud before we got onto the ridge, but had a good sense of where it was.”
Eflin says, “We hiked up the ridge for a while, got three-quarters of the way up the ridge, and it was super-cloudy with really strong winds—so strong we were almost getting blown over with our boards. We were considering turning back then and hiking down. But we decided to try to cut into the bowl.”
Eflin believes they tried to drop into the first chute on the north side of the bowl, the first chute on the left as you reach the first plateau. But after looking at a photo of the bowl, he still isn’t sure where they dropped in exactly because the visibility was nil.
“We had no avy gear whatsoever, we totally underestimated it,” Eflin admitted. “It was so windblown off the top, there were rocks everywhere. We started hiking down into the chute. I was the first to drop in, I took a couple turns down, and a couple turns later I could see cracks in the snow. We met where I was, and were trying to dig down and see what was going on. It looked like it was only a couple inches that cracked. We decided, ‘Let’s just try and get down.’“
Eflin found himself in the middle of a storm, and on a few inches of snow covering razor-sharp scree. They had been favoring a windlip that held more snow, but after seeing the cracks, Eflin decided to hike back up a little ways to reassess.
“I was lower than my friends, and I was hiking back up to where they dropped in. Two of my friends cut off the windlip, and I was hiking back to where they dropped in. I started to walk down into the chute and strap in. I’m walking down, talking to the people above me, and mid-sentence my feet go out from underneath me. I didn’t know the slab broke off below my two friends standing above me. I was right in the middle of it, I completely lost my feet and was upside down; I held onto my board for half a second. They were yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear. I dropped my board; it was pretty steep. I was completely upside down.”
A slab had cut loose above Eflin, and he said the fracture line was about knee-deep. The chute chokes into a tight funnel, and Eflin careened down the funnel and was flushed out completely inverted.
“I flipped over, got a mouthful of snow and went all the way under. Flashing in my head—‘I am so dead.’ Even if my friends could get to me, we have no avy gear. I was completely convinced I was a goner. In the back of my head, if I get buried, I’m done. I was so disoriented, but pretty lucky I wasn’t strapped in so I could swim and get above the surface. I disappeared out of sight and I would guess I slid 200 to 300 feet.
“Eventually, I finally stopped and was on top covered with just a little bit of snow; I was able to stand up… in total shock and freaking out. I could hear my friends yelling, ‘Drew, Drew,’ but they couldn’t see me. No one wanted to move. My board was buried; I couldn’t find it anywhere. I then hiked up what slid, trying to look for my board, but my main concern was getting out of there. We got up to the rocks and climbed back up onto the ridge; we couldn’t believe what just happened. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ we said, and started walking back down.”
Unfortunately, Eflin’s epic wasn’t over yet. The lack of visibility had the crew disoriented, and instead of following the ridge back down where they came from, the crew dropped off the other side—towards the south, opposite the chutes—and was lost.
“We started going down, then realized, ‘Wait—this looks so much rockier than what we came up.’ We hiked down and realized we dropped down to the left; we were totally lost. We turned around and hiked back up, it was so steep we climbed up on all fours. Everyone was really tired, and it was like 5:30 p.m. Every once in a while the clouds would break and we could see the valley. We got lower, finally found our tracks again, hiked down the ridge and back to the snowmobile. Everyone was super tired, freaked out, and so thankful to get off that mountain.”
Eflin said he learned a tough but valuable lesson that day. “We couldn’t believe we did that. Four different times we should have turned around. It was a series of bad decisions.”
He hopes that this experience will serve as a reminder to all who venture out into the backcountry, early season or not. “I can easily say that was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever been through. It was scary, very scary. I was pretty much having a nervous breakdown afterwards.”
Red Lady Recon
Closer to town, early on Tuesday morning, experienced backcountry skiers Bryan Wickenhauser and Billy Laird skinned up Red Lady to see what there was to see. And ski.
“It’s on—anything above 10,200 feet is really good,” Wickenhauser reported. “We didn’t summit because of the winds—above 11,200 feet would ski great but I can only theorize. New snow being transported created tough conditions, but I bet the bowl is going to be awesome based on what we saw at 11,200 feet.”
Wickenhauser said there were six inches at the trailhead. “When we got to the top we were in two-and-a-half feet of snow. It skied great, nearly midwinter conditions, we hit a few minor scrapes but nothing too bad until the last 700 feet. I was skiing boot-top powder—it was deep and it was cold.”
Wickenhauser said “Nothing was cracking or moving” and he didn’t notice any signs of instability in the snowpack. However, he didn’t venture into the alpine and try to ski Red Lady Bowl, instead taking a safer, and more weather-protected route down in the stormy conditions.
Avalanche Activity Statewide
The most recent CAIC statewide forecast, from October 25, states the following: “Avalanche activity spiked upwards over the weekend. Human triggered avalanches were reported from the San Juan northward to the I-70 corridor. These were all on generally north aspects, above treeline, and had fractures nearing 2.5 feet at the deepest. Snow from mid-October has had perfect conditions for metamorphing into facets and depth hoar where it has survived. In some areas a melt-freeze crust has formed at the surface before Monday’s storm, which will/has made for fairly unstable snowpack conditions. North aspects above treeline have the most snow cover, with southerly aspects mostly melting out before the weekend storm of October 23-24.
“These are very similar conditions to what we saw at the end of October 2009 when we had nine human triggered avalanches with a couple of very close calls. October 2010 looks to be on pace to match October 2009, which CAIC forecasters hope does not become the case. It is not too early for avalanches, in fact, snowpack conditions and recent weather have created a rather reactive snowpack. A large problem with early season avalanches in October are the rocks, downed timber and stumps you will get dragged through on just about any ride.”
Local Knowledge
Keep it safe out there. The Crested Butte Avalanche Center (www.cbavalanchecenter.org) will begin weather and avalanche hazard forecasting on November 20. If it continues to snow they may start weekly forecasts earlier. People can post observations to the website and to the CBAC Facebook page at any time. CBAC also has a new weather station up above Elkton—more to come on that. And the CBAC Avalanche Awareness night will be the first or second week of December.
CBAC president Reid Templeton said of the pre-season powder, “It’s early season and people don’t have their avy eyeballs on. We tend to be really excited and push ourselves further than we would mid-winter. Be careful. The winds have been blowing 50 miles-per-hour up high. People need to be aware as they’re getting out.”
For now, fall forecasts are available at the CAIC site—visit www.avalanche.state.co.us
for updates.
