By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
On Saturday, Feb. 23, snow conditions at Turnagain Pass offered backcountry skiers a tantalizingly day of fresh, deep powder. The mountains and valleys around the pass are a favorite location for both backcountry skiers and snowmachiners, offering wilderness recreation easily accessible from the Seward Highway, just a short 20 minute drive from Girdwood.
Ian Wilson along with six friends was one of several groups skiing on Sunburst Mountain in Turnagain Pass. There was an avalanche advisory in effect in the area throughout the week, following a tragic incident a week prior when two snowmachiners were killed in an avalanche in the pass.
Wilson, 24, came up from Portland, OR to visit his college friends, who live in Anchorage. Wilson was schooled in backcountry skiing and works at a wilderness therapy camp in Idaho, and his group chose an area to ski that had tracks where others previously skied that day. One by one, they headed down the south side of Sunburst Mountain. Wilson was the last to go, and as he chose his line and began to descend, the mountain’s fickle conditions suddenly turned violent and explosive as a large pack of snow broke away and Wilson found himself racing the tumult of snow quickly bearing down on him.
As the avalanche overtook him, Wilson tried to ride it out, but after traveling about 700 feet atop the roaring white tidal wave, he fell and disappeared, covered under a thick blanket of concrete slabs of snow.
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Ken Smith/Turnagain Times Girdwood resident, Matt Murphy, was part of a search and rescue team that saved the life of Ian Wilson, a skier caught in an avalanche Feb. 23 in Turnagain Pass. Murphy works for the U.S. Forest Service as a snow ranger. |
About a quarter-mile away, Girdwood resident Matt Murphy, 33, was part of a group of four skiing nearby on the western aspect of Sunburst Mountain. Murphy is a snow ranger for the U.S. Forest Service based in the Glacier Ranger District office in Girdwood. He was off the clock that day and waiting for his ski buddy, Kris Dudley, who was behind him. Dudley heard a loud rumbling coming from the other side of the valley. He looked up and saw what no skier in the backcountry wants to see, a cloud of thick powder bursting down the mountainside.
“He yelled out to me,” said Murphy. “I knew that by the tone of his voice, there was something wrong. He saw part of the powder blast, but we didn’t actually see the fracture.”
Murphy and his friends knew there were skiers in the area, having seen 11 people climbing along the ridge that day. The group ran for what seemed an eternity to reach the avalanche area.
“We had to hike slightly uphill to get to the debris pile,” Murphy recalled, sitting in a cubicle at his office. “I don’t know how long it took, I was in a time warp.”
When Murphy’s group got to the scene, they saw a massive avalanche with a large debris pile and a big gully that spanned the majority of the valley between Magnum and Sunburst Mountains.
“There were a lot of people that were doing a beacon search,” Murphy said. “We called up to the search party and asked how many were buried, and they replied ‘One’.”
Murphy and Dudley went to the gully at the base of the slope. Bystanders began showing up, aiding in whatever way they could in the search. Shortly after they began scanning the area for a beacon signal, Murphy picked up one. They followed the signal until they got a “find search.” They were close and called out to their other group members, Skip, Stretch and Mark, and other responders ran to the spot.
“I yelled out for everybody to get their probes and shovels ready,” said Murphy. “Then we probed, and on the second or third probe struck the victim. As soon as we got the strike, we started tearing in with our shovels.”
After digging about three or four feet down, a back pack was uncovered. A good sign, indicating which direction Wilson’s head was positioned. Murphy and his group immediately started digging for his head to clear his airwave; they were barely able to lift Wilson’s head up, and Murphy checked is mouth to see if his airwave was clear.
“He began to breathe very slowly, a labored breathing,” he said. “He was unconscious with very blue skin color.”
They held Wilson’s head and torso up while rescuers dug frantically to free him from the concrete snow around him. Emergency personnel soon arrived on scene, along with a physical therapist. They immediately began treating Wilson for possible neck and back injuries and worked to protect him from any trauma.
“It was a team effort,” Murphy stated. “It took about 10 to 15 minutes to totally dig him out, and about 20 people total were there.”
A State Trooper helicopter landed and delivered search personnel from Alaska Mountain Rescue, as well as search and rescue dogs.
“They were excellent and professional, and they took over the scene,” Murphy said. “In the end, he turned out to be totally fine and was released from the hospital that evening.”
Murphy emphasized that the rescue was a team effort and especially wanted to recognize the work of his group members, specifically his friend Stretch, who is a regular skier in Turnagain Pass, as well as Skip, Mark and Kris, who are all locals from the valley and Anchorage.
As for the cause of the avalanche, Murphy said it was human triggered. “They probably skied terrain to steep for the conditions. It can be a very difficult thing to analyze. They had quite a bit of experience.”
But in the end, a life’s lesson was learned for the skiers and responders. And for Wilson, he now has a second chance at life.
“I was surprised to find him alive,” said Murphy, “because after 15 minutes of being buried, most people only have a 50 percent chance of living. He was buried an estimated 25 to 35 minutes. It’s statistically rare to survive that.”
Murphy recently spoke to Wilson and his group, and said Wilson is very happy to be alive and learn as much as he can from the event, and hopes other people can too.
“He was lucky that he wasn’t buried in the gully,” Murphy said. “The avalanche was big enough that it launched him to the Magnum side of the drainage, which led to a shallow burial. If he’d been buried in that gully, he would have had tons of debris on top of him and that would have killed him. He was probably a couple of minutes from death of asphyxiation.”
Turnagain Pass has always been a precarious and dangerous place to ski and snowmobile. A week before Wilson’s rescue, Girdwood resident Kevin Bennett, an experienced backcountry snowmachiner and member of “Turnagain Hardcore”, a group of extreme snowmachiners, helped save two of six snowmachiners caught in the avalanche on Turnagain Pass. The other two snowmachiners died.
Backcountry recreation allows both skiers and snowmachiners a chance to experience the unparalleled beauty of an Alaskan winter; however, it is a balancing act between recreation and risk that every individual faces—and the ultimate risk is death.
“Avalanches may exist anytime there’s snow on the mountain,” warned Murphy. “Most of the time, it’s stable, but you have to be very careful and recognize when it’s not stable.”