A skier was buried to their waist and carried 200 yards last Sunday afternoon after triggering a massive slab avalanche on Berthoud Pass's "Postage Stamp" run.
The uninjured individual released a detailed account via the Colorado Avalanche Information Center the same day as the accident. The skier admitted they ignored explicit forecast warnings, saying, "stoke" clouded their judgment, as they proceeded to ski a high-consequence face, without doing snowpack tests.
"Today, I triggered a slab in the Postage Stamp bowl, which propagated across basically the entire face and went to nearly full depth," the skier wrote in an observation report posted to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center website on Jan. 18.
"I triggered the slab after making a few turns down the face; I saw the slide trigger about 10" in front of me and attempted to ski out of it to the side but was quickly swept off my feet then caught and carried to the sparse trees at the base of the face where I was buried up to my stomach but luckily my airway was clear and I didn't sustain any injuries in the slide."
The slab propagated across nearly the entire face, sweeping the skier into sparse trees at the base. While buried to the waist, the skier's airway remained clear, allowing them to radio their partner.
"My partner was quick to arrive at my point last seen and start initiating a search but I was able to radio him and tell him that I was ok before any search effort actually began," the skier wrote. "There were also multiple parties positioned at various point on the ridge to skiers left of the face who witnessed the slide and were able to communicate to my partner where I wound up. I was then able to dig my legs out a little with my hands and extricate myself from the small tree which had sort of caught me. I was then able to communicate to the other parties in the zone that I was physically fine and didn't require help getting back to the trailhead."
Reflecting on mistakes
In his report, the skier looked back on the numerous mistake he and his partner made that day, noting that he was "very lucky to have came out alive, even luckier to be uninjured."
"Reflecting on the decisions we made we were able to identify some obvious lapses in judgment. Firstly, we were attempting to ski a line on an aspect and elevation which the forecast had said were where you would be most likely to trigger an avalanche, so our first mistake was choosing to go for that face in the first place.
Their next mistake, was "more nuanced," he wrote, but had to do with skiing a line different from the one they had ascended.
"We were aware that there was a risk of wind slabs on top of the deep persistent slab and so we were on the lookout for the warning signs while we were bootpacking up the lookers right side of the face where the coverage was much thinner than in the middle of the face. We found the snow that we were bootpacking through to be solid enough (no shooting cracks or whumpfing), so we decided that we felt ok continuing and we gained the summit ridge where we decided to ski the postage stamp bowl instead of some other lines in neighboring bowls which we had been considering.
"Beginning our descent, I dropped into basically the middle of the face thinking that the snow coverage would be more consistent than our bootpack which was very sharky, maybe 75 feet lookers left of our bootpack. Retrospectively, it is clear that skiing a line which is that far from your line of ascent is a mistake because the judgment calls made on the way up were made based on observations made on the line of ascent."
Reflecting on things they could have done differently, beyond avoid the terrain altogether, the skier wrote that "it would've been wiser to ski our line of ascent, which was outside the slide path based on photos we got from the bottom."
Both he and he partner had taken a level one avalanche safety course and are certified Wilderness First Responders who regularly ski on Berthoud Pass. Although they both have significant backcountry skiing experience, this was the first significant avalanche they had been involved in.
"We shouldn't have let our stoke cloud our judgment," he wrote to end the report. "Big thanks to the other parties in the zone and to Grand County SAR for their prompt assistance."
How did skier remain above snow debris?
Despite the 200-yard ride, the skier remained mostly atop the debris -- an outcome Center Director Ethan Greene says isn't as rare as one might think in smaller, less compressed slides.
"The debris flow in an avalanche can be fairly complicated," Greene said. "An object that's on the surface may remain on the surface until you get down to the bottom ... in a small avalanche like this, the compression is not terribly dramatic."
Greene noted that while the skier survived, the conditions were textbook for a slide. Wind drifting in the area can pile up snow ten times faster than normal precipitation, creating "thick slabs" over a brittle foundation of December snow.
The "Postage Stamp" is a colloquial name for the steep, above-treeline face located between Second Creek and Current Creek drainage. Its popularity and proximity to U.S. Highway 40 often lead to higher traffic, but Greene warned the terrain is inherently dangerous.
"Just because it has a name like that means that it has more activity," Greene said. "It's a perfect place, both for some good skiing on a good day and to trigger an avalanche on the wrong day."
Lessons from the field
The involved parties, both of whom have AIARE Level 1 training and are certified Wilderness First Responders, cited several "lapses in judgment" in their report:
* Ignoring the forecast: The group chose a southeast-facing slope despite CAIC warnings that those specific aspects were the most dangerous that day.
* Inconsistent observations: The pair based their safety assessment on their ascent route, which featured thinner, more stable coverage. When they dropped into the deeper "middle of the face" to avoid rocks, they entered a much more volatile snowpack.
* Skiing the line of ascent: The group reflected that skiing back down their uptrack would have been the safer alternative.
Grand County Search and Rescue, the Sheriff's Office and EMS responded to the scene at 2:23 p.m. GCSAR officials expressed gratitude to the multiple witnesses who called 911, which helped confirm the skier was safe shortly after the slide stopped.
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