Missoula News

Skiing and Snowboarding

Recent Deaths at Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Highlight Dangers Resorts Rarely Discuss

By Allen Best, 1-19-11

On a powder day, there are no friends. That saying is probably as old as the first ski lift, but it’s a dangerous wisdom — as was demonstrated at Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort during recent weeks.

Two snow riders – one on skis, the other a snowboard – both plunged head first into the wells surrounding trees at the resort. Hung upside down by their boards, choked by the collapsing snow and wedged by the tree and branches, they could barely move. Or so the evidence suggested.

The first victim 16-year-old Niclas Waeschle, an exchange student from Germany, was unconscious but still alive when he was fished out of a tree well. Several days later he was removed from life support. Then, in early January, Scott Allen Meyer, a 29-year-old probation and parole officer, was found dead after he failed to reunite with friends at day’s end.

The particulars of these separate tragedies broadly parallel a statistical profile of victims of what is clinically called non-avalanche related snow immersion deaths, or NARSIDs. About one-third of victims die with no tree near. But whether in tree-wells or out, nearly all victims are young, male and were riding the snow alone during or shortly after a big storm.

“It doesn’t happen every place every year, and it doesn’t necessarily happen every year,” says Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, a trade group. Prodded by his group, ski areas have become more aware of the potential peril in recent years and have taken increasing steps to remind customers of dangers.

This image courtesy of treewelldeepsnowsafety.com shows the location of a tree well with a 6-foot person standing in it. Only the top of his head is visible.

Of the average 38 people who die annually at U.S. ski areas from all causes, inclusion collisions, avalanches and the trauma from colliding with trees, the toll from snow immersions has averaged only 3.3 per winter since 1990.

British Columbia, outside the Untied States, has the highest single death toll of any state or province but is not included in the U.S. figures.

Fresh – and deep – snowfall has the closest correlation with danger. For snow riders, it’s hard to imagine too much powder. But that’s precisely what happened at in the 1990s in the Back Bowls of Colorado’s Vail Mountain when a man drowned after plunging into what might be described as a snow hole and being unable to right himself.

Like avalanches, the danger of immersions spikes during and immediately after major storms. But if cold persists, the snow can remain consolidated for days, even weeks.

Again like avalanches, avoidance is the best precaution. If caught, virtually your only hope is to have somebody nearby. Plans to reconnect at the ski lift don’t quality. People have died after being inverted in tree wells within 20 minutes, perhaps less.

Unlike avalanches, however, the danger of deep-snow and tree-well immersions was not broadly appreciated until relatively recently. Many snow professionals had their own brushes with danger, but dismissed them as freaky things.

Berry fell into a tree well when he managed a California ski area in the 1970s. Because a friend was near, he was able to grasp a pole and pull himself out. “It was definitely a new experience for me,” he says.

Dale Atkins, president of the American Avalanche Association, defied the statistics. Skiing alone at Colorado’s Loveland Basin, he got suspended in a tree well. Unlike most, he was able to release his bindings unaided.

“That gave me enough space that I was able to clamber out and then shake the snow out of my ears and jacket and head down the hill,” he says.

But few people began connecting the dots until after Paul Baugher began hoisting a warning flag. A 30-year veteran of the ski industry, Baugher likewise gave little thought to the first tree-well fatality at Washington’s Crystal Mountain, where he is director of ski patrol. “We thought it was a real fluke,” he says.

That was in the early 1990s. Then, a decade later, another one occurred. “It really made me start looking into this,” he says.

This image shows snow immersion in a tree well, where it would not matter if a snowboard’s bindings were easily released or not, since the buried person can’t reach the board. It’s why the buddy system is the most important precaution in a gladed area.

Conducting an experiment in 2007, Baugher found just how difficult it was for somebody fully inverted into a tree well to escape without assistance.

Recruiting five snowboarders and five skiers from the ranks of Crystal Mountain’s volunteer patrollers, he suspended some fully inverted, as most victims are found. A few he positioned more horizontally. For safety purposes, he had a pulmonologist on hand with supplemental oxygen, emergency medical technicians, and snow shovelers. All volunteers had ropes tied to their waists.

“It was freaky to watch,” says Baugher. Several in shallow, horizontal positions managed to get out on their own. But all those who were inserted vertically in the wells wanted out before the two-minute time limit. Their faces as they emerged, says Baugher, were gooey, and some were turning blue.

Heavily-weighted downward pointing tree branches, the snow collapsing into the well, and finally the tree trunk itself left little or no room to move. Breathing itself was difficult. Indeed, some people in snow immersions suffer what is called positional asphyxiation, meaning the body’s contortion has blocked breathing.

The deaths at Whitefish statistically buck the profile uncovered by Baugher, who found the average age of snowboarding victims was 23 and of skiers 32. But like most cases, they were on moderate slopes of dispersed trees relatively close to groomed trails.

Baugher finds no evidence that snowboarders are more susceptible to death by snow immersion. Using painfully compiled statistics – nobody had kept track before, nor do they now – Baugher testified on behalf of a manufacturer of snowboards in a case heard in Oregon. The plaintiff accused the manufacturer of negligence in a tree-well fatality because of the non-releasable bindings used by the victim.

“I told the jury, ‘Don’t buy into this,’” remembers Baugher. Intuitively even now, he would want to have releasable bindings. But Baugher’s statistics —sketchy from 1970, but firm since about 1990 — show no correlation between binding types and fatalities.

“Releasable bindings are not the answer. Having a partner is,” he says.

In fact, 13 skiers and 10 snowboarders have died since the 2005-06 winter.

Has the growing popularity of venturing into gladed areas, sometimes called “backcountry lite” and in the closely related “sidecountry” resulted in more deaths?

“Off-piste skiing has become more popular, and that’s one of the factors,” says Bob Roberts, executive direct of the California Ski Industry Association. “For a certain segment of the sports population, pushing the envelope is what they’re all about.”

NSAA’s Berry concurs – and ties it to improving equipment.

“Even within the ropes, we are seeing people skiing areas that were only lightly skied 20 to 25 years ago. Now, they’re skied or boarded heavily. There are very few places that people don’t go now,” he says.

Berry points to the evolution of snow-gliding gear: the long, narrow and hard-to-control skis of 30 years ago followed by snowboards, then wider and shorter skis, and now the new inverted-camber “rocker” skis.

“With the narrow-waisted 215-centimeter skis, it was the rare person who could enjoy it and have fun,” he says.

Statistics collected by Baugher only thinly support this theory. An average 3.2 deaths during the 1990s has grown only to 3.8 deaths during the last decade. He says he’d like to believe his educational efforts – he has a website called treewelldeepsnowsafety.com and has spoken at many NSAA conferences – have reduced the death toll.

Canadian heli-ski operators were probably the first to understand tree-well dangers.

“By the nature of the terrain we operate in, avalanche and tree wells are two of the major things that we’re watching at all times,” says Sarah Pearson, sale and media relations director for the Banff-based CMH Heli-Skiing, which has 10 heli-skiing lodges in the Purcell, Monashee and other ranges of the British Columbia interior.

Operating since 1965, the company has had six fatalities, the most recent in 1999. All guests, says Pearson, are instructed carefully in avalanches and tree wells.

“Nobody goes into the field without avalanche beacons, and when you specifically are teaching people about tree wells, the buddy system is incredibly important,” she says.

U.S. ski areas were slower to emphasize immersion dangers – a process that is even now continuing. Other than occasional warnings in the snow report, Whitefish had no educational component specific to tree wells prior to the two recent accidents, says Donne Clapp, publication relations manger of the resort. It is now assembling one.

For obvious reasons, ski areas aren’t eager to talk about the dark side of their gladed, powder-rich skiing. For example, Vail had no information publicly available of its snow-immersion death. Other ski areas declined comment for this story.

But with four tree-well fatalities in the last decade, including two in one year, Colorado’s Steamboat ski area has become aggressive in alerting customers to dangers.

“A lot of people say there are no friends on a powder day, but we educate our guests about the benefits of having friends on a powder day,” says spokeswoman Loryn Kasten.

The ski area operator reminds customers of the danger in its grooming reports, in flyers and at the ticket office. As well, a warning sign has been posted at the base of Morningside, a lift used to access backcountry-type terrain within the resort’s boundary.

Not all ski areas are equally susceptible to snow-immersion deaths. Baugher has found none occurring east of the Rockies, probably because New England resorts just don’t get as much unconsolidated snow.

Type of trees can matter. Closely spaced, smallish lodgepole pine trees, such as have been most common in Colorado, will less likely have large tree wells. Ditto for aspen trees. Larger coniferous trees with their broad canopies result in a larger well around the trunk—and more danger of collapsed snow should a person slide into it.

But always there are exceptions: one death was caused by a land mine of a tree, its top concealed by fresh snow. Below, however, was a sturdy prison of branches.

Another unusual immersion – and inversion – occurred in Utah. Doug Abromeit, the director of the Forest Service’s National Avalanche Center in Ketchum, Idaho, says the snowboarder went head first into a snow bridge over a creek. He couldn’t pull himself up, and the board kept him from falling into the stream. He died the slow death of hypothermia.

Baugher, the self-described bell ringer of such dangers, does see evidence of growing awareness that he believes has reduced the death toll below what it would otherwise be.

The easy part, he says, is that the same rules can be taken from the avalanche safety playbook. Stay in sight of your buddies, he says, as they’re your only hope.

Allen Best edits and publishes Mountain Town News and can be reached at allenbest.net.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The above has been corrected from its original posting to reflect annual snow-immersion deaths in the United States. The original version indicated British Columbia was included in this total. It is not.

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