Alyeska ski patroller Byron Hill undergoes rehabilitation therapy at Providence Hospital. Hill was caught in an avalanche Jan. 10 on Mt. Alyeska, injuring both knees.
Ken Smith/Turnagain Times photo
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Ken Smith/Turnagain Times photo |
By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
On Jan. 10, Alyeska ski patrollers Byron Hill, Scott Rowekamp and Bob Messing were patrolling the North Face of Mt. Alyeska. It is the steepest and most difficult section of the mountain, with many double-diamond expert trails that are as steep as 50 degrees at certain points.
It was around 3 p.m. and the winds had picked up, sweeping across the soft snow-packed trails. The winds, along with soft snow packed conditions, prompted the patrollers to inspect the trails for closures and possible avalanches.
Hill separated from his fellow patrollers to assess an area called “The Knuckles,” which didn’t appear severe until he arrived at a pocket near the top of “The Ball and Chain Chute.” The loading was unusual, spindrift, heavy and dense.
Hill cautiously worked his way across the pocket. He tested the snow with his poles as he moved towards “Pinkey” the next chute over. Suddenly the snow started cracking around him. In a split second, a medium sized slab about 60 feet in diameter broke away, carrying Hill with it.
“It’s probably one of the worst places to take a ride on the North Face,” Hill recalled. “When I started going, I realized I was on the slab, and I was going to go for a ride. I was looking down below me and couldn’t see anything good to land on. It was all rocks, trees—badness.”
The plate of snow plummeted down the mountainside, broke up and pitched Hill 20 feet in the air. As soon as he landed, he felt a sharp pain in his right knee.
“I was in the snow, going for a ride, fully entrained in the snow getting rag-dolled,” described Hill. “That’s where it whacked my knees, I felt the right one go; I didn’t even feel the left one till later. It rag-dolled me a little bit, pitched me in the air and when I came down from that I decided I didn’t want to rag-doll anymore. So, I tucked in tight, fetal position, and I had my helmet on and my backpack and I’m sure that saved me from a bunch of trauma.”
The slab continued to increase in speed reaching nearly 60 miles per hour. It approached another rib and flew over it, throwing Hill nearly 80 feet through the air with only rocks and trees below him. He braced himself for a hard impact but when he landed, much to his surprise, he was both conscious and unhurt, save for his knees.
“I sailed through the air in the fetal position believing I would not hit anything soft,” he said. “I really didn’t feel like there was anything good for me to go down to.”
Hill continued tumbling downward, engulfed in snow. Ignoring the pain in his knees, he began swimming out from the torrent of snow, struggling to keep his head above the surface.
Finally, after traveling about 1,200 feet, the slab came to a stop. Hill found himself buried up to his armpits. He conducted a quick self-assessment of his injuries, yet other than the pain in his knees, he felt okay. No broken bones and no head injuries.
“Anybody who skis in avalanche terrain, I mean that’s what you don’t want is to go for a ride at over exposure, you know, and that’s what I was doing,” he said. “I mean when I looked down, when I realized I was on a slab, and I’m looking down below me to see what my trajectory was going to be, it did not look good. I really thought I was looking at serious injury or death. As far as that goes, I think the injuries that I got away with were the minimum that you could expect from a ride like that. I mean, I fully expected to have broken bones and really bad trauma and be buried.”
Hill said he rejoiced in his good fortune and then quickly started digging himself out of the mound of snow. Messing and Rowekamp sped down to assist him and quickly freed him from the snow and radioed for a rescue sled.
A month after Hill was taken for the ride of his life, he looked back while in rehabilitation at Providence Hospital. It will be a familiar place for him in the coming months as he works to recover from his knee injuries. He will have extensive surgery on his right knee, which suffered torn and ruptured ligaments as well as other damage, and possible surgery on his left knee, which also has torn ligaments.
Despite the injuries, the 42-year-old Hill was happy and upbeat. After all, he survived an avalanche, and lived to talk about it.
Hill understood the risks of ski patrolling on a mountain where avalanche mitigation is part of the job. Mt. Alyeska is fickle and dangerous at times, and avalanche control is risky business, especially when it involves on-site assessments. Despite the inherent risks, Alyeska ski patrollers have remained out of harms way, for the most part; although there was another incident a couple of years ago when patroller Geoff Gross was caught in an avalanche on the North Face and suffered similar injuries as Hill.
The ski patroller’s job involves assessing trail conditions, and they are often asked to detonate hand charges in areas that cannot be shot by an avalanche gun, like on the North Face. Explosives are commonly detonated on the mountain to trigger controlled avalanches.
As Hill approached the section of snow on North Face, he was quite aware that he was entering a potential avalanche area.
“I was just doing my job, that’s what I do,” said Hill. “I just go out there to assess the conditions, and it just happened my assessment that day was that there was avalanche potential. We were closing things down, and I was heading for that particular area to assess, and in my mind, I was thinking we were going to close that down, too…After I took that ride, that’s exactly what we did. We shut everything down after that.”
Although he doesn’t like second-guessing himself, Hill said he might have done certain things differently that day.
“One thing I could have done differently is maybe take a different entrance to that area, so I would have been tighter up against the rocks at the top and wouldn’t have been mid-slab when it happened, and may have been above the slab when I triggered it,” he said.
Hill has gone over the sequence of events from that day hundreds of times to try and understand how the avalanche happened and how he may or may not have contributed to its occurrence.
“Obviously, you don’t want to get into a situation like that, so you’ve got to refine your thought process and make better decisions,” he said.
Hill fully intends to return to ski patrolling duties next year. He began patrolling Alyeska in 1995 and said he does not intend to stop now.
“I’m going to be back next fall skiing,” he said. “That’s my goal.”