Althouse: "They are young and strong and fast, and the slope, receding into a steepening gully of shadow, snow, and rock, is as irresistible as it is serene."

January 7, 2015

"They are young and strong and fast, and the slope, receding into a steepening gully of shadow, snow, and rock, is as irresistible as it is serene."

"They have an inkling that this place, and this way of passing through it, might be very dangerous, but who at the age of nineteen really knows?"

50 comments:

SteveR said...: I suppose that counts as a "tragedy" but its a big time first world problem.; 1/7/15, 12:18 PM
m stone said...: The article is probably notable for it's author's not calling this event a "tragedy." CNN will, no doubt.

When "testosterone, groupthink, and an extreme imbalance of skill and experience" are dealt with, this will no longer be a first world problem.; 1/7/15, 12:28 PM
Henry said...: Terribly sad.

The article reminds me of an incredible long-form multimedia article published by the New York Times several years back:

Snow Fall
The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek
By John Branch.

Branch describes how the skiers and snowboarders that lived were the less proficient who turned back from the most dangerous route. The most experienced skiers went forward.

One of those who turned back was lift operator Erin Dessert:

“I’ve been riding Stevens Pass since I was 3 years old,” Dessert said. “I can tell circumstances, and I just felt like something besides myself was in charge. They’re all so professional and intelligent and driven and powerful and riding with athletic prowess, yet everything in my mind was going off, wanting to tell them to stop.”

There's something just incredibly sad about that contrast of the best and most capable setting off toward catastrophe. It resonates with the way Paumgarten describes Astle and Berlack, but it's not being 19 that lead them to icy death.; 1/7/15, 12:43 PM
Henry said...: @SteveR - "Death" is universal. So is hubris.; 1/7/15, 12:47 PM
jimbino said...: "Life is trouble; only death is not. To be alive, you must undo your belt and look for trouble."-- Zorba; 1/7/15, 12:53 PM
JK Brown said...: Unfortunate
But also fortunate they didn't kill anyone else with their foolish decision.

First rule of survival: Nature is neither good nor evil and respects no one.; 1/7/15, 1:05 PM
Owen said...: I remember doing Ski Patrol drills with probes looking for duffel bags. On easy gradients, in a few feet of snow, on a frigging golf course.

It took hours.

Out in the world, in a big bowl filled with a gigaton of snow that has been broken loose at nearly the speed of sound and turned to ICE, the odds are even worse.

I am sorry for these guys but yeah, testosterone and superior athletic moves and peer pressure and God what a beautiful day made just for us! This will keep happening.; 1/7/15, 1:08 PM
Christy said...: Skiing off piste is orgasmic.; 1/7/15, 1:10 PM
Owen said...: "Skiing off piste is orgasmic." Yes, it can be. Part of the thrill is being "outside." Not bound.

The quality of the terrain is actually not often so amazing. We may denigrate the corporate operators for being so corporate and operational, but they DO try to find and make available something that is both crazy and survivable. Off-piste is by definition another place entirely.

Maybe I'm getting old but I don't have much patience about paying to clean up the mess left by the Young and the Restless. As with jackasses who call 911 on their mobiles and expect heli-extract because they failed to prep for their adventure, I say, send them the bill.; 1/7/15, 1:31 PM
Unknown said...: I've done many things similar when I was a young man. Now that I'm an old man, I don't know how I was lucky enough to survive. I didn't regret my sense of adventure then but now I am terribly afraid that my children were born with the same.; 1/7/15, 1:35 PM
Conserve Liberty said...: My mother-in-law, a proper New Enlander, member of the Outing Club at Middlebury, skied the Headwall - Tuckerman's Ravine - hiked the AT North to South. Though time and age and society had mellowed her by the time I came to know her, there was an inner restlessness I could never quite grasp . . .

Some people just have an urge to do.

When they succeed they are heroic. Otherwise . . . .; 1/7/15, 1:42 PM
Unknown said...: Reckless youth makes rueful age.; 1/7/15, 1:59 PM
Titus said...: You know what is white hot this winter-Anything Canada Goose-the shit is everywhere-and this is the first year I have ever heard of it.

tits.; 1/7/15, 2:05 PM
Owen said...: Titus: way to trivialize the conversation around some esoteric preoccupation of Your Perfect Selfness.; 1/7/15, 2:14 PM
Owen said...: Conserve Liberty: your MIL sounds like a real character. I want to applaud her questing nature but I am sure that, day to day, she was/is not the easiest of dates.

But as a people, if we aren't pushing the limits (and losing some of our wilder pushers-of-limits) are we not slowly capitulating? Nothing stays still.; 1/7/15, 2:17 PM
Anonymous said...: There are Old Pilots,
There are Bold Pilots,

There are no Old Bold Pilots...; 1/7/15, 2:40 PM
SteveR said...: Well beyond our romance with the young and restless, most of us, to the extent we could afford at that age to be doing that kind of gig in Austria, had a certain amount of respect for the laws of nature. Gravity happens---all the time--and the transition from potential energy to kinetic energy doesn't require much education is Physics to be wary of.; 1/7/15, 2:57 PM
SteveR said...: Henry, my death in that manner is not "universal" and if pointing out the obvious is hubris, well I'm guilty and not the least bit ashamed.; 1/7/15, 3:01 PM
Rusty said...: Titus said...
You know what is white hot this winter-Anything Canada Goose-the shit is everywhere-and this is the first year I have ever heard of it.

It certainly is.; 1/7/15, 3:28 PM
Mikec said...: This story reminds me of the amazing canoe trip that Eric Severeid [the well known TV journalist] and a classmate took, as a junior in high school,from Minneapolis to HUDSON BAY! The courage and skill of some young people is sometimes difficult to imagine. Severeid and his friend survived, against all odds. His book detailing the journey is titled Canoeing with the Cree. http://www.amazon.com/Canoeing-Cree-Eric-Severeid/dp/0873515331/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420664975&sr=1-1&keywords=Canoeing+with+the+Cree; 1/7/15, 3:30 PM
Original Mike said...: Another good read: Sigurd Olson's The Lonely Land.; 1/7/15, 5:31 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: Young strong and fast---how many 19 or 20 year old winners of the Darwin Award uttered the last words; "Watch this."

Out here on the front range of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Los Angeles Basin, we have one of rhe highest frequencies of rattlesnake bites in the world. Most nearby emergency rooms stock antivenin for victims of snake bite.

99.2% of the victims share three things in common--in fact the emergency room docs have a name for the syndrome. They call it "The Three "T's"--Tequila, Testosterone and Twenty (years of age)

Young men of all skill levels (and these two ski racers were highly skilled) will tend to push the envelope, with sometimes fatal results.; 1/7/15, 5:36 PM
Heartless Aztec said...: Spent my whole life risking it in the surf. No stranger to being 19 and invulnerable. The last near drowning in Costa Rica cured me and I dialed it way back. It is the province of the young and indestructible to hang their asses out in places they shouldn't be. The tragedy isn't that they were young - the tragedy is that they were sure they would live forever and had no inkling of the shallow connecting cords of life.; 1/7/15, 5:44 PM
Roughcoat said...: "They are young and strong and fast, and the slope, receding into a steepening gully of shadow, snow, and rock, is as irresistible as it is serene."

What is this, an entry in the International Imitation Hemingway Competition?

Or just an example of really bad writing?; 1/7/15, 7:56 PM
Owen said...: "What is this, an entry in the International Imitation Hemingway Competition?"

If you are a man, Roughcoat, you can accept this record with the same sincerity that went into its writing. It is true and manly prose that reveals the hard planes of the real world.; 1/7/15, 8:38 PM
Roughcoat said...: Owen:

I respect much more my woman who is brave and true and has brave lips that taste like sparkling Madeira white wine that has been chilled in the swift cold brave stream of the mountains where the men are brave and the women are also brave and both the men and the women have hair on their chests.; 1/7/15, 8:48 PM
Roughcoat said...: I do know that in the mountains of the place that the old men in the villages call the Tyrol which in the language of those villages means "High Place of the Hairy Chested Ones" there are many young men who are also very brave who will die in great numbers in the spring when the Italians come with their poisoned sausages which they will drop into the swift brave streams that the brave young men will drink from and then die because they did not know that the poison was poison and would poison them because they were so brave.; 1/7/15, 8:53 PM
David said...: The article treats this as a one time venture onto some irresistibly seductive slope. More likely these guys have done stuff like this many times before, with no adverse consequence. It's routine for top young skiers to go out of bounds.

My daughter lives near Jackson Hole. She and her husband often ski out of bounds, never touching a lift. They hike up what seems to me an impossible distance with their skis on their backs and ski down.

They tell me they know the area and can determine what is safe and what is not. So far they have been right.

I hope the boys on Yosemite's cliffs are ok tonight.; 1/7/15, 8:57 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Mary Jane/Winter Perk had smoke huts in the woods.

The woods is where we went. I got knocked around a bit. Some stuff necks the next day. No ER visits though. That took the CR 500.; 1/7/15, 8:59 PM
Titus said...: Canada Goose winter coats costs like 700.00-I am impressed, and buying one of course.

tits.; 1/7/15, 9:03 PM
Trashhauler said...: A cousin of mine and his friend were hiking in Colorado in late fall and got caught in an avalanche. At my uncle's request, I kept in touch with the Sheriff through the military search and rescue center. Speaking professionally, the Sheriff told me there was no way he could get enough people up there fast enough to do any good. His one helicopter was already stuck up there in blizzard conditions with five people aboard. In effect, his own rescue team needed rescuing.

But it is hard to tell a father there is no hope to find his son. I let him down as easy as I could. They found Carl's remains after the spring thaw, right off the trail.

The world is hard and people die pretty easily.; 1/7/15, 9:12 PM
wildswan said...: If we all died when we did something stupid and dangerous, we would all be dead. I feel a little sad for these young guys who didn't have a chance to learn from their mistakes.; 1/7/15, 9:13 PM
Owen said...: Trashhauler: wow, that's hard. But your story really does show the hard edges of things. There is a very thin line between life and death; between the rescuer and the one being rescued. You're at maximum altitude for the chopper and wind/visibility are closing in, and you're supposed to be "looking for somebody else"? Ay.

You do what you can.; 1/7/15, 9:24 PM
Tari said...: I don't have much beyond an ordinary amount of sympathy for these 2 guys. They took an unreasonable risk, as people in their "line of work" are apt to do, and they paid a very, very high price for it. I grew up around ski racers and I don't know many who would have done things differently at 20. Unfortunate as that is, it's the truth.

I have more sympathy for the people who have to go in and rescue people like this (or in this case, search for the bodies). Decent people risk their lives to help clean up after thrill-seekers such as these. My grandfather was one of these; as a forest ranger in the Adirondack Park, he spent many (mostly volunteer) hours looking for the lost, the injured and the stupid. He was always glad to help, but there were many times my grandmother wished him home, rather than out in the dark trying to safely remove some city-dweller from a granite rock face.; 1/7/15, 9:26 PM
Owen said...: Roughcoat: your prose is true and brave. Your woman also. And the laughter it drew from me was true.; 1/7/15, 9:43 PM
CWJ said...: You know, it's a matter of for what you ski. Me? I'd rather make several score perfect turns down a steeper groomer being in the moment keeping my head up appreciating a great day in amazing surroundings.

I've skied Europe far more than I ever thought I would. The Swiss and Austrians are the most gonzo. The less said about the English, the better. The French are impeccable skiers who manage the good life aggressively. But ah the Italians! Now they know how to enjoy a mountain without feeling they need to conquer it. That's my idea of skiing!

But hey. If you need your adrenaline, go for it. As an Italian woman said to me on my first trip there, "They'll find him come Spring."; 1/7/15, 9:45 PM
Big Mike said...: To an Athlete Dying Young; 1/7/15, 9:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Being a rich 19, being invincible and dying in an avalanche is not a tragedy. so sorry, but it isn't.

A tragedy is being 34, a blue collar local volunteer, out looking for that dead idiot, dying in an avalanche and leaving a widow, two small kids and debts...

too many of the rescued we read about are selfish a$$es.

We don't read about the UH-60 that crashed or the Coast Guard Surf Boat that goes missing.

Google Salomon Browne

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penlee_lifeboat_disaster

"They say we gotta go out. They don't say we gotta come back..."; 1/7/15, 9:50 PM
Michael K said...: "99.2% of the victims share three things in common--in fact the emergency room docs have a name for the syndrome. They call it "The Three "T's"--Tequila, Testosterone and Twenty (years of age)"

Another rule of ERs and snakebites. If they are in the arm, the bitten one is drunk. It doesn't matter what time of day. Sober people don't try to pick up rattlesnakes.; 1/7/15, 10:09 PM
Barry said...: Ahhh...to be 19 years old and not coddled and assumed to be helpless.
http://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2015/01/incredible-wwii-story-he-left-in-p-51.html#more; 1/7/15, 10:33 PM
Larry J said...: Americans regard each new incident of death in the mountains as a case study, an inquiry into the nature of risk and human error. Perhaps oversimplifying, I’d say that Americans yearn to avoid repeating these mistakes while Europeans know deep down that these mistakes are bound to be repeated. It’s hard to fault either point of view.

That's why we investigate aircraft accidents instead of just whistling past the graveyard. That's why so many aviation magazines feature articles about accident reports and "I Learned About Flying From That" (Flying Magazine feature). It isn't that we pilots are morbid. We want to learn what caused previous accidents (or near accidents) in the hope of avoiding to make the same mistakes ourselves.

There's an old adage (source unknown) that summarizes this mindset. It goes "Anyone can learn from his own mistakes. Wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others."; 1/8/15, 7:24 AM
Rusty said...: The Drill SGT said...
Being a rich 19, being invincible and dying in an avalanche is not a tragedy. so sorry, but it isn't.

A tragedy is being 34, a blue collar local volunteer, out looking for that dead idiot, dying in an avalanche and leaving a widow, two small kids and debts...

That's the thing that struck me after reading,"Into Thin Air". About an ill fated Mt Everest expedition.
Rich, arrogant, and idle.
Sorry , dudes. You all knew the risks going in. I feel sorry for the poor schlubs who have to carry the corpses out of there.; 1/8/15, 7:35 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Definitely the age here. You hear that there are no old avalanche experts, but that isn't true. Know one who is over 60 now. He spent half a career ski patrolling, then moved up. But also had a side gig of avalanche prediction.

Grew up in the mtns of CO, and have lived by SLC and Tahoe. Which means most of where people die from them in this country. Like these guys, we spent our teens trace raining, but not being nearly as good, moved into backcountry skiing at 20 or so. And pretty much all of this one ski group of mine, except me, got caught in a small one in their twenties. Thankfully, none were lost (my next brother, being much closer to this, knew people wiped by avalanches). I have all the gear, beepers, probes, and even a vest that is supposed to let you breath under the snow. But haven't really done much back country skiing since my early 50s, a decade ago. And by then, it was very conservative, with a lot of pits dug to check snow condition and the like, and even then, very cautiously skiing anything that could slide.

I look back to when we started back country skiing, and we took a lot of very stupid chances. We were bullet proof, as these two guys probably thought themselves. Someone above called it Darwin, but I think not in the way that they intended. Childless late adolescent and early adult males are expendable, and the species uses them to push the boundaries. So, they are more likely to die. Always has been -'when the Donner party was snowed in over a century and a half ago, most of those who died were the unmarried males and children under two - coincidentally, the most expendable demographics. They also form the bulk of most armies.; 1/8/15, 7:59 AM
Anonymous said...: Bruce said..So, they are more likely to die. Always has been -'when the Donner party was snowed in over a century and a half ago, most of those who died were the unmarried males and children under two - coincidentally, the most expendable demographics. They also form the bulk of most armies.

OT, I keep telling my Eastern friends how they suck at driving in snow and how wimppy the police are at letting them do stupid stuff.

I (raised in NorCal) point to the CHP in the winter on US 50 or US 80 headed East up grade to Tahoe..

They put out railroad flares at a point up the grade. You can put your chains on, turn around, or park it, but we don't have the manpower to go deal with your bodies when you run off the road uphill.

I joke that the CHP motto is: "No More Donner Parties"

:); 1/8/15, 8:25 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I hate it when Blogger screws up and eats posts as "conflicting edits". Evidence of pretty shitty software design.

Right by the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnels on I-70, US 6 starts up to Loveland Pass by the Loveland Basin ski area. Used to be one of the main routes across the Continental divide in central CO, and CDot tries to keep it open to keep trucks carrying hazardous material out of the tunnels. Right after the ski area, seven avalanche shoots, known as the Seven Sisters, cross the highway. Loveland ski patrol has long helped control them from the top. I should also note that my next brother was one of the first to ski all seven of them.

I took a year off from racing in the mid 1960s, or really, it was the year before I got serious racing. I was on the Junior Ski Patrol at Loveland that year, and was working in the Patrol room at the bottom the day that they brought three victims of a slide on one of the Sisters in there. My first experience of death up close. If I remember correctly, another died w/I the year, and the third had permanent brain damage. The image of them, all so gray, being brought in, has stayed with me since them, almost 50 years ago. Which maybe why I was the only one from this HS ski group never to have been caught in an avalanche.; 1/8/15, 8:33 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Drill - you can definitely tell when you enter CA on I-80, west of Reno - road goes to pieces. Left the area maybe three years ago, and maybe CA is putting money into the highway, but somehow doubt it. Good highway up to the state line, then Boom. Ruts, pot holes, etc. NV gaming does seem to provide more road money than whatever they have left in CA.

I think that we may see even more of this up the I-70 corridor in CO. People fly into DIA, jump into a car, and head for the slopes. Most of Ski Country USA is accessed this way. Remember one day a couple of decades ago, when I was following my father down Floyd Hill at about 25 in the right lane. He had moved there as a child in the mid 1920s, and I was a native. We were being passed by rental car after rental car in the left lane, whizzing by at the speed limit. No surprise, one of them didn't make the sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill, as the highway hit Clear Creek.

To this day, you routinely see rental cars off the road most anytime the roads get slick on that corridor. Esp, it seems, SUVs, and most esp, Jeeps. Yes, 4wd makes you go better on slick roads, but doesn't help that much stopping.; 1/8/15, 8:50 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: The quality of the terrain is actually not often so amazing. We may denigrate the corporate operators for being so corporate and operational, but they DO try to find and make available something that is both crazy and survivable. Off-piste is by definition another place entirely.

Yes and no. Problem in the US is that the Forest Service owns most of the good skiable land, and the permitting process has become draconian. You can slowly expand existing areas (and a lot of that was laid out decades ago), but don't bother trying to open a new ski area. I helped cut the original trails at Keystone (in CO) in 1970. We would build huge piles of trees in the center of what would soon be runs, throw some old tires in, fill them with a gas/diesel mix, and light them on a wet night, letting them burn through the night. Imagine the FS today allowing that. They also bulldozed a road to the top to put in the lift towers. Again, a no-no these days.

The thing about backcountry skiing is that you get to ski untracked powder, only limited by how far you are willing to hike, or how much money you have. It is glorious.

But the article alludes to European off piste skiing being skier porn. We are talking thousands of feet of vertical, skied very fast. The skiers they film might make a half dozen turns, where the rest of us might make a half a hundred. No surprise that one of the guys was a speed specialist. A friend of mine plays these videos when I visit, in between sailing videos. It is intoxicating to watch, just imagining what the skiing must feel like.; 1/8/15, 9:07 AM
Anonymous said...: To this day, you routinely see rental cars off the road most anytime the roads get slick on that corridor. Esp, it seems, SUVs, and most esp, Jeeps. Yes, 4wd makes you go better on slick roads, but doesn't help that much stopping.

Coming back on topic of invincibility and privilege, It never fails to amuse me that folks think that if you pay enough for an Escalade, it entitles you to flaunt the laws of inertia when you try and turn at the bottom of the hill. Folks don't recognize that the grip that allows a 4WD SUV to accelerate on ice/snow is about 1/100th of what is needed to hold the road when you try to turn 2 tons of steel at the curve...

The old farmer in the pickup you passed on the way down? He knows...; 1/8/15, 9:16 AM
~ Gordon Pasha said...: 20,skilled and feeling invincible can lead to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Voss#Last_stand

Of course he has had books, movies, and even a Wikipedia entry. Those poor fellows will be forgotten in a week.

Sic transit gloria mundi.; 1/8/15, 11:48 AM
JPS said...: Barry Birdwell:

I never knew that story. Thanks so much for that link.; 1/8/15, 12:28 PM