The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Uncertainties and surprises can always happen…
The one thing you don’t want to be is complacent when it comes to skiing the backcountry. And you want to be prepared for the unexpected.
Those are two big reminder lessons learned last week by one of Crested Butte’s most experienced local backcountry skiers. Dave Penney, who has been skiing the area’s mountains for decades and goes out several times a week, was caught in an avalanche on Schuykill Ridge Thursday afternoon, December 18. He survived with a broken leg but the seriousness of the situation has made an impact.
Penney and his girlfriend, Danika Gilbert, a backcountry guide in the San Juan Mountains, were out for a quick afternoon tour when the incident started.
“We had dropped the kids off at school and were wanting to do something quick,” Penney explained. “We decided on that first little shot that’s right there after you hit the ridge. I’ve skied it a bunch in the past. That’s where the complacency comes in. It looked good and I jumped in and I normally get a feel for the snow by taking one turn. I took two this time and it started sliding. It was pretty heavy and I think I broke my leg pretty quickly. It hurt all the way down. I was bouncing off all kinds of stumps and stuff.”
Penney said most of his backcountry skiing this year has been in the San Juans. “I didn’t thoroughly evaluate this snowpack,” he said. “Complacency. It happens to a lot of people and I’ve lost a lot of friends in the backcountry. That was as near to death as I want to be and it made me realize it can happen to anyone. I hope people take a lesson from this and stay aware.”
Gilbert was still on top of the ridge when the slide started. “I had to slow myself down,” she said. “When he broke his leg, he screamed and I could hear him every time he hit something. I wanted to jump in and follow him down but told myself to slow down and wait.”
Gilbert said she had a moment before Dave jumped in to ski that she thought something wasn’t quite right. It all looked fine and she said the rational part of her brain said it was safe, but a subconscious feeling hit her that not everything was as it appeared. “A big lesson for me is to listen to that voice,” she said. “Listen to your feelings and your gut.”
When Dave stopped sliding, he was on top of the snow. He knew he wasn’t skiing out on his own. Luckily, the couple had cell phone service and, given the bleeding from a compound fracture in Dave’s leg, they called 911 and Crested Butte Search and Rescue (CBSAR). CBSAR called in a helicopter and the couple explained there was a bench on Schuykill that would allow it to land. But that bench was still 1,000 feet below the injured Penney.
That’s when the next lesson came into play. “We all try to be as light and quick as possible out there anymore,” said Penney. “But that wasn’t good for my situation. I had taken a lot of things out of my pack. I didn’t even have my first-aid kit. I didn’t have my down jacket that I normally would. I get the idea of being lighter and faster but the big lesson for me that day was there’s no need to be so light that you aren’t prepared. Really think about what you have in your pack before you leave. Make sure you have everything you need in case something unexpected happens.”
Gilbert skied down to Penney and emptied the packs to take an inventory of what they had. Noting that her boyfriend’s leg was “jello,” she managed to concoct a splint for Dave’s leg using the handles from their avalanche shovels and probes. They secured it using the ski skins, a scarf and some ski straps.
“It wouldn’t have been hard to have some cord in the pack,” said Gilbert. “And in hindsight, helmets would have been good to have. Watching Dave in the slide and then knowing that he had to slide and scoot a thousand feet with a broken leg and not knowing if the snow was going to hold above us—it was wild. It’s a good thing he is so tough.”
Once his leg had a secure splint, Penney had to scoot down the rest of the chute to the bench above the creek. Penney said he was in shock and “sitting in the snow probably helped. When the helicopter arrived, they loaded me up and flew me to Gunnison, where I had surgery. I was released the next day and am recovering at home.”
Gilbert said she was constantly evaluating the situation and while it all worked out in the end, “if we had to be out there longer, we would have been in trouble without things like a down coat.”
The whole situation made Gilbert realize how the volunteers who came to the rescue put themselves on the line. “There were 20 people out there for us,” she recalled. “The guys on the snowmobiles were having a hard time because the snow wasn’t consolidated. The flight nurse and doctor were helping load Dave in just their blue surgical gloves. At least we had winter gloves to keep our hands warm. Everyone out there was great.”
Gilbert had been caught and buried in an avalanche 12 years ago. It’s a traumatic experience and one she doesn’t like to remember. “The most important thing that can come out of a backcountry avalanche experience is that other people take lessons from it.”
“The bottom line is that I made a mistake and I want people to learn from this,” Penney concluded. “Don’t be complacent and always be prepared.”
The investigation
According to lead Crested Butte Avalanche Center forecaster Zach Guy, an investigation the day after the incident by forecaster Ian Havlick showed the 25-foot-wide slide that caught Penney was between 12 and 20 inches deep and ran about 300 feet. Debris ranged between three and eight feet deep. It was classified as a soft slab, unintentionally triggered by a skier, small relative to its potential path, but large enough to injure or kill someone, and failed in old snow.
“The avalanche danger was rated moderate on near-treeline slopes that day, stating that ‘it is possible to trigger a persistent slab avalanche up to one or two feet thick.’ You are most likely to find this problem above treeline or on a few near-treeline slopes that face north through east,” said Guy.
Guy said the weather pattern this year is making the local backcountry tricky right now.
“We have some very weak layers and problematic crusts that formed during the drought in December,” Guy explained. “We’ve had incremental and small amounts of snowfall since mid-December, which have started to build a slab on these weaknesses. The weight of the skier on that steep slope was enough to trigger one of these recently formed slabs.
“Coming out of a three week drought, we have a very weak snowpack right now, especially on slopes facing the northern half of the compass,” Guy continued. “As of December 20, it hasn’t been tested by a significant storm. That will change over the next few days. We will see very dangerous avalanche conditions develop this coming week. As this weak snowpack gets buried by significant snow amounts, it will continue to be problematic for some time. The avalanche that occurred on Thursday is foreshadowing and was relatively small to the size of avalanches we expect to deal with in upcoming weeks and months.”
The Crested Butte area has had several weak layers develop this early season, and this most recent one, the December 13 interface, is frighteningly weak and widespread, according to the Crested Butte Avalanche Center.
“We’ve seen a number of avalanches on this layer in the past week,” Guy said. “Most have been relatively small because we just haven’t had the major loading event yet. We also have several other weak layers deeper in the snowpack on some slopes that produced impressive avalanche results during some of our earlier storms in November. We encourage anyone traveling in the backcountry to visit our website at www.cbavalanchecenter.org.
“Uncertainties and surprises can always happen with a backcountry snowpack,” Guy finished. “Everyone accepts some amount of risk when recreating in the backcountry. If you want to travel in the backcountry and wish to minimize that risk, avoiding avalanche terrain is the simplest and most secure option.”
