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Cody and I discuss responsibility in the backcountry; the verdict of an Austrian man facing manslaughter charges for leaving his girlfriend on Austria’s highest peak; the deadliest avalanche in California history; the Olympics; and what we’ve been reading & watching
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We’d love for you to share with us the stories or topics you’d like us to cover next month on Reviewing the News; ask your most pressing mountain town advice questions, or offer your hot takes for us to rate. You can email those to us here.
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TOPICS & TIMES:
Snowbird & Blister Summit (2:05)
New BLISTER+ Members (3:08)
Cody’s Recent Trip & Current Conditions (4:46)
Austrian Man Found Guilty in Girlfriend’s Death (12:46)
Castle Peak Avalanche (29:35)
Olympics Recap (54:38)
The Most Canadian News (55:25)
Worst, Best, & Most Surprising Olympic Events (58:13)
Hunter Hess / Olympic Athletes & Political Statements (1:12:09)
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– If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
– Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman
– Goliath, by Matt Stoller
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My (season rental) cabin is in Soda Springs about 2 miles from the site of the Castle Peak avalanche, though about 1000 feet lower. I was up here until ~12 hours before the slide (got out just before everything shut down) and my kids are in programs at the same mountain as the parents who were killed. Like Cody and Jonathan I don’t know anybody involved firsthand but I do know people who do. Needless to say the community is shattered right now. My reaction is pretty darned close to Jonathan’s at 49:00.
Jonathan is correct that none of the individuals in this group were newbies. I don’t think that the “Academy moms” were particularly knowledgable about avalanche safety, but they had done these trips many times before.
I agree 100% with Cody about the group’s decision to go out to the huts when they did, and I would have done the same. The Frog Lake huts are a very hard reservation to get, and Blackbird guides has an unconditional 60-day no-refunds policy. Storms that are forecast to be “huge” regularly fizzle out, and vice-versa. As Cody says the things to question are why they didn’t stay put or take the safer-but-longer route out. Under similar circumstances I would like to think that I would have just dug in and stayed put for an extra day. I’ve been pinned down for a couple days in a storm before (in a floorless Megamid that we had carried as an emergency shelter), and it was unpleasant, but I was alive at the end.
It’s important to emphasize how uncommon that sliding layer that had developed just before the storm was by Tahoe standards. Snow that had fallen several days before had transformed on some aspects and at higher altitudes to a sugary layer more similar to what you would expect in a Continental snowpack like Colorado’s, with high potential for propagation collapse (“whoomph”) and remote triggering. Probably worth noting that it appears but isn’t confirmed that the party remotely triggered the slope above them.
Folks from Tahoe who relied on their “local experience” might have badly misjudged the risk, and I’ve heard several locals with decades of experience remark that they would have thought that route back from Frog Lakes was a go in a storm like this. I looked closely at that layer myself earlier on Monday, and thought it was exceptional and far enough outside of my personal experience that I wouldn’t even attempt to judge the risk.
Like Cody I’m shocked that an operation as strong and reputable as Blackbird could have made that mistake, though. They were all AMGA qualified and AIAIRE instructors who educated and experienced with the full range of potential conditions, not just what usually happens in Tahoe. They actually posted an Instagram video on Monday correctly highlighting the presence and uncommon (for Tahoe) nature of that layer.
I can’t help but wonder if there was commercial pressure to get the guides back out so that they could meet the next group of clients on time, leading to deviance from best safety practices. I know this is a bad time to be assigning blame, but we also ultimately need to understand how human cognitive biases play into tragedies like this and how to correct for those going forward.