Early Season Avy Accident

While the base of the snowpack is generally solid this year, it didn’t start out this way. This article is a reminder to take care in early season bottomless fresh powder.

Anna Brown, an avalanche forecaster with the Canadian Avalanche Centre, explained that the snowpack was unstable because of the continuous storm systems coming through the area.

“It’s still sitting lightly on the terrain,” she reported to the Revelstoke Times in November 2009. “It hasn’t pressed in, it hasn’t had time to bond together, it hasn’t had time to squish in to the terrain and really set up.”

File this info into your avy safety databank and draw from it each fall season. Learn from the frightening close call that these four sledders experienced.

“You start to hallucinate, go in and out, and then it just goes to your mind, well, I’ll just go to sleep, it will be OK,” he told the Times Review. “You think in your head at that time it’s going to be okay, but the reality is it’s the worst possible time. You actually want to close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Cooper was anything but OK. Completely covered in snow for more than..”

CLICK HERE to be forwarded to the full article from the Revelstoke Times Review, Nov 26, 2009