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February 21, 2008 —
On Jan. 22, 2005, I skied Racquet Club Chute with a good friend of mine. By the time we got to the bottom, I had literally pissed my pants and he and I hugged each other, feeling lucky to be alive.
At the end of the ski day, we took last “chair” up the Mongolia surface lift. We then hiked up to the backcountry gate as we normally would and skied along the top of Marvin's Garden to the “saddle” at the top of Racquet Club Chute.
Racquet Club Chute is the northern aspect that leads down into East Vail from the ridge that separates East Vail and Mushroom bowl. This northern chute takes you past Racquet Club Falls and to the Vail Racquet Club. The southern aspect from this saddle in the ridge takes you into the thick trees of Mushroom Bowl and eventually the bottom of Chair 10.
At the top of Racquet Club Chute, we saw a snow pit that had been dug very recently. The tracks from the snow pit indicated that the group had opted to stay in the trees and avoid snowfields. We snooped around in the pit a bit and dug back the snow; the snowpack was absolutely awful.
It was completely obvious why the folks who had dug the snow pit stuck to the trees. The snow pit revealed that a number of hard layers, firm enough to snap in half, were separated by sugary layers, and all were atop a giant layer of sugary snow. When snow feels like sugar, it's “faceted,” and it basically acts like ball bearings upon which snow layers will readily slide.
To say we were no longer psyched about our decision to ski the chutes is an understatement. We were flat-out scared at that point. It was too late to escape via Mushroom Bowl. We would have been in those trees for hours, and it was almost dark. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
For some reason, just before we entered the chute, I took a photo. From there on down, the camera stayed in my pocket. My expression in that photo is humbling to me.
We entered the chute and things were going fine for the first few turns. My buddy and I were alternating and skiing one to a line at a time, and we were moving methodically and surgically, but very quickly. We had plenty of experience doing this together before, having skied the chutes and Marvin's Garden together many times.
That experience, combined with the stress of the snow conditions, led us to be particularly efficient and smooth this time, I felt.
About 20 turns in, I started to hear loud cracks. I yelled to my buddy, “What the hell are you doing?” The cracks were deafening and sounded like gunfire, and I honestly felt relieved for a second because I concluded there were obviously people ahead of us who had avalanche grenades and were using them clearing the terrain. After all, what else could be that loud?
“Those are the trees, we gotta get outta here!” is what I remember my buddy saying.
The loud explosions we were hearing were, unfortunately, NOT avalanche grenades. They were coming from the settling and shifting snow we were skiing on, and from the 3-foot-diameter lodgepole pines whose trunks were cracking under the pressure of the snow creep.
My buddy and I had talked many times before about the plan when things get really hairy, and we both executed professionally. The plan was simple: point ’em. We pointed our skis down the fall line and took off. We abandoned alternating lines. We were doing the skiing equivalent of running for our lives.
About all I remember is gunning it. Fortunately, neither of us fell. The fast skiing through the tight trees and surprise cliffs was probably something I could not duplicate ever again, because the adrenaline commanded more of my body than I did. The experience was surreal; I felt more like a spectator than a participant. And I thought that this is exactly the kind of out-of-body experience people have before they die.
We got to the top of Racquet Club Falls, which is about 1,800 vertical feet below the top of the chute, and I simply collapsed. The adrenaline level had dropped and my mind got a hold of things. My legs were absolutely fried. I couldn't move. I had basically sweated through everything I was wearing. My pants were particularly sweaty.
My buddy and I had nothing to talk about and just looked at each other. It was over. Or at least, we felt it was over enough to take a break for a minute.
I got back up and we hucked the western side of Racquet Club Falls and skied to Meadow Drive. At the time, I lived at Vail Racquet Club condos so we had basically skied right home. A beer was in order.
We popped our skis off upon reaching Meadow Drive just as a group of people were exiting the town bus at the Vail Racquet Club bus stop. It was one of those sublime moments for me, as I thought that while we were just up there in that chute staring at death among the cracking, faceted snow and exploding lodgepole trunks, these people had been on the bus home and were thinking about what to have for dinner.
On the road, we celebrated a bit. I jumped up and down and screamed in celebration, subsequently scaring the folks walking past us who had just exited the bus. My buddy and I high-fived and immediately began recounting what we had experienced. It had been absolutely crazy, and as primed to slide as it possibly could have.
Thanks to luck and sticking to lines in tightly packed, albeit exploding trees, we had made it out. I told him that I at first thought that the cracking and trees were avalanche grenades exploding downhill from us. His response was something to the tune of, “Yeah, you thought that at first because you're a stupid New York transplant.”
Point taken, I thought. I had and still have a lot to learn. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
1 Comment on "A bad day in the chutes"
kevin — June 24, 2008
Bad ASS!
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Photos by Scott and Paulina Proper
Curiosity and Vail's Backcountry Gates
February 4, 2008 —
You've heard the chatter about Marvin's Garden, Mushroom Bowl and the East Vail Chutes. You've looked toward Mount of the Holy Cross while riding up Blue Sky Express and seen the ridge across Earl's Bowl with beautiful powder with ski tracks in it. Maybe you've wondered "what is that?" or maybe you've been jealous.
Curiosity can kill the cat. This past Saturday (Jan. 26), which was a fabulous, sunny, 30-degree day, we were skiing Grand Review and a group of four stopped us to ask, “Where is the backcountry gate?”
They were referring to the backcountry gate that allows people to exit the ski area and ski the aspect that's east of the north-south ridge Grand Review follows. It's marked as "Wildlife Habitat - No Access" on trail maps because it was identified as lynx habitat when the environmental impact study was done to assess the feasibility of Blue Sky Basin.
“You missed it,” I replied, because they were indeed about a half mile past the gate.
“Oh, so it's up higher?” one of the folks said with a British accent. He turned to his group and said, “Let's try again!”
“Has any one of you gone through that gate and skied the terrain before?” I asked.
“No.”
“I humbly suggest that unless you've gone there before or have someone to guide you, don't go there,” I said.
I then went on to elaborate about the different skiable lines beyond the gate, which vary from reasonably challenging terrain with tight trees to lines that lead you to getting cliffed out (i.e., you are in such a position that you must either huck, hike back up to escape hucking, or stay put, dial 911, and hope you're in range).
I also mentioned the avalanche deaths that have happened this season (Jan. 4 and 12 in the East Vail Chutes) and how they indicate a particularly unstable snowpack. Furthermore, through that particular gate it's easy to get lost.
The group appeared to get the gist and decided to avoid the gate, only after asking us whether we would take them through the gate and guide them if they paid us. The answer was an easy “no.” No, because I'm not taking responsibility for you. No, because you're probably going to hurt yourself.
There are a number of backcountry areas adjacent to virtually all aspects of Vail Mountain and Blue Sky Basin that are a short hike at most from the top of a lift. You've heard of some: the Minturn Mile, Mushroom Bowl, the East Vail Chutes.
If you know how to get there, great, and if not, I ain't tellin’. Neither are most other locals, apparently. Most screen their audience in a manner similar to how I responded to the group on Jan. 26.
Furthermore, there is basically no information available on the Internet (I looked) about these areas. While supporting the concept of freedom of information, I speculate that there is no information out there because locals intentionally withhold it. Kind of like how you don't post instructions on how to make dynamite, even if you know how.
Most locals I’ve talked to about the two deaths (so far) this season in Marvin's Garden, a giant, spectacular, steep, north-facing bowl “easily” accessible through a backcountry gate atop Outer Mongolia Bowl, have generally said the same thing: “I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.”
They feel this way because of the increased traffic in the area and the increased risk those who go there incur. Marvin's Garden's upper two-thirds basically has no trees, although the entire area is well below timberline. This is of course because the terrain was burned by the same fire that made the legendary Back Bowls, and because the snow avalanches regularly.
In the summertime, the saplings that are visible are very small at best and generally no higher than three feet tall. That's because anything higher, on average, gets mowed down by an avalanche soon after busting that three-foot ceiling.
Preparation for heading through a backcountry gate, in my opinion, requires equipment, experience, skill, education, and a good deal of humility. Matt Gustafson, who died Jan. 12 skiing a very thrilling, aggressive, and exposed line in Marvin's Garden, was probably among the most experienced and accomplished East Vail Chutes skiers ever.
He was also our neighbor for the past two and a half years. He was a regular in the Chutes over the past couple years, and already had about 25 days in this season skiing the various lines offered by Marvin's Garden and the Chutes. He had the training, the knowledge, the experience, and the proper gear. He had the humility but sadly flipped the wrong side of the coin.
That is part of the reality of going out of bounds, or of even staying in bounds, as the tree well deaths this season at Steamboat attest. Nobody wants to think about the wrong side of the coin. Folks may romanticize the East Vail Chutes as an area of endless powder and big air, which in general they are, but the Chutes don't care whether you have the best ski day of the year on them or whether you die.
Following the two deaths in the East Vail Chutes, there has been plenty of hullabaloo about closing access to the backcountry. Big Brother knows best, apparently. Fortunately, the Forest Service has done nothing other than say that there are no plans to close the backcountry and that users go there at their own risk.
I feel that the freedom to live life to its fullest involves incurring calculated risk, whether you're simply crossing the street, driving your car, or skiing avalanche-prone terrain in the backcountry.
Accidents are that unexpected side of the probability coin rearing his ugly head. Humility doesn't stop him from rearing it. Humility means you acknowledge and respect him and recognize he's always lingering.
— By Scott Proper
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