Danville Man Shares His Story of Surviving an April Avalanche on Mt. Washington

"I’ll die by being torn apart by the trees."

This story was first published in The North Star Monthly and is reprinted with permission.

My name is Dan and I’m a hiker. On Saturday, April 11, my friend and I embarked on a trip up Mt. Washington. Unbeknownst to us, it would be an experience like no other. Our lives would be threatened and we would learn a lot about ourselves.

My obsession with hiking began a decade ago when casual walks in the beautiful Green Mountains evolved into hitting all the high summits and odd personal challenges, like climbing to the summit of Camel's Hump at least once every week between Thanksgiving and town meeting. Since 2003, when I moved to Danville and married my wife Susan, I began spending time in the White Mountains of New Hampshire -- hiking all the high summits. This February, I hit a career milestone -- ascending 1/2 million vertical feet and over 1,500 miles of distance (since 2001).

I typically do something 'big' every weekend except for a few each year when personal or practical matters interfere. My wife is a saint.

I met Steve "Mad Dog” Mattera back in 2001 when I was running and hiking solo. Mad Dog was an ultra-marathoner (100 mile foot races) with a keen ability to combine a love of the outdoors with a remarkable “unstoppability” and a cool, even temperament. Mad Dog and I started speed-hiking together, and within months I had met three of his buddies, Garvin, Louie and Nate -- friends he had been adventure racing with for a few years. Garvin was like a tornado on a road or mountain bike and had more bicycles than I ever thought possible. Nate was a machine (I have no idea how tall he is– my guess is 6 foot 4 inches), has muscles where he needs them and an uncanny ability to run up mountains. I had never seen anything like it. It was like meeting the Fantastic 3. Tim was the last addition to this collection. He was a triathlete in search of pushing his training, endurance and experience. He was quiet, organized, fit and able to go long distances.

The events of April 11 unfolded in a simple way for Tim and I. But it takes a little explaining for those who don’t normally concern themselves with avalanche safety. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) runs the Mt. Washington Avalanche Center. These folks go out every single day during avalanche season, dig pits, do snowpack analyses, forecast conditions, assess the risk of both natural and human-triggered releases, and they do this all over the mountain. The entire analysis gets packaged in a report that gets posted at Pinkham Notch (NH) and online every single morning. We read the report every day, all winter, whether or not we intend to go up on Washington or anywhere else. Saturday's conditions turned out to be exactly what we thought they would be. In fact the USFS analysis and my experience of the snow-filled Dodge’s Gully were the perfect guides. I could have done the hike blind-folded. Even the expected snow loading at the top was what it usually is, and we did the standard 'stay to the left' to avoid the big pillow of snow. The newer snow had been exposed to sun and other factors that tend to consolidate and bond it - and it likely would not have come down on its own. But it broke under me this time for whatever reason -- not quite enough sun maybe.

The forecast had been for possible light rain in the valley, maybe a little snow on the summits and an unfolding of weather as the day progressed. A high probability of a cloud-enshrouded summit was also forecast; the best weather would be early in the day. Our plan was to hike up to the Hermit Lake cabin, see how the weather forecast was shaping up, talk to the USFS staff and then decide how to proceed. It turned out to be a gorgeous, cloud-free, blue-sky day with no clouds or weather coming in until later. So we headed up Dodge's Drop - an extraordinarily appealing feature that runs straight up to the ridge along a high summit called Boott Spur. On the way up, the air was relatively calm (this side of the mountain is often more protected from the winds that roar across the ridge above) and we were in light tops the entire way up. I was actually wearing a t-shirt, and many of the skiers and hikers who congregate at the Hermit Lake Cabin were in light tops and even shorts. As long as you were out of the wind and in the sun almost any clothing was comfortable. We were wearing crampons and had taken out our axes (one in each hand). The snow was perfect - firm, but not icy; we barely made footprints.

The initial ascent is up a feature called Hillman's Highway. About a third of the way up, we made a hard left following a route that is, not coincidently, known for ongoing avalanche activity. Avalanches lay down a route by piling snow, clearing trees and following natural paths defined by the surrounding terrain. In fact, one of the challenges is always to remember that these nice, clear road-like paths are known avalanche run-outs. To either side are surfaces that might never seen an avalanche– but if you stay on these paths any snow that gets loose is guaranteed to hit you. But, based on the avalanche risk bulletin of that morning, the likelihood of natural avalanches seemed miniscule.

So up we went.

Dodge's Drop gets pretty steep. It starts off steep and just gets steeper. Initially the slope isn't bad (you actually have to bend over to touch the ground in front of you ). But as you get to the top it's so steep that leaning against the slope as you climb is your natural posture. With a pack on, you lean into the mountain so you don't fall backward. It’s very much like climbing a ladder.

We finally got to the "start zone,” so called because it's where the avalanches frequently start at the very top of the mountain. We evaluated the situation as we always do; looked around; chose a route. As we approached the top, Tim was about 15 feet away, following me around a huge bulge of windblown snow. Within 20 feet of the top, without warning, the snow cracked around me and dropped. The time between the snow cracking and my body falling was zero seconds. The fracture was the start of the fall, not a warning sign.

Initially, it was like being on a giant raft. Within a second the snow dropped, crumbled into pieces and became loose and unconsolidated. The snow that broke free was around me in an area the size of a canoe. All I could do was try to get my axes into the hard base below the moving snow and hope that everything would drop out from under me so that I would be left hanging with the snow crashing away below. I was kneeling as I started to slide, and I raised both arms and swung the two axes with everything i had -- following the axes with my entire body as deep into the snow as I could reach. Sure enough, they bit hard into the base. I know that I could never have hammered these axes as hard as I did in any other circumstance, but I was determined to play an active role in whether I lived through this. It was not a time to hold back. I could have cut a car in two. And this was just over a second after the avalanche began.

Well, my axes bit into the underlying ice, but being anchored only works in the simplest of circumstances. It turned out (as I found out later from Tim) that when the snow broke free, it stopped supporting the snow he was on, and additional fractures shot all along the top of the start-zone, freeing tons of snow, which immediately dropped, throwing Tim backwards down the gully and both lifting me off the base and then, because I was slowed from the axes catching, covering me. As I was lifted up I shouted to Tim,"I’m riding it down!" to let him know that I couldn’t see any way to avoid that. After that moment, the rest of my activity in the snow was all at a level of focus that anyone in battle or in any life-threatening situation experiences. It’s the opposite of panic -- working and working and never, ever, ever letting up at all, not to breathe, not to think, not to wonder, not to care. If anything would make a difference I was going to do it.

To a large degree, the tasks were simply these: keep my feet downhill, get on my back, protect my mouth from getting packed with snow, get my head above the snow, be visible to observers as long as possible(I didn't really think of this at the time, but if you do everything by the book you get this nice benefit). I wasn't able to get up out of the snow, but we were still accelerating, the snow was hissing and roaring and we were up to maybe 30 mph within the first five seconds.

Then we were airborne. It got quiet and I had time to think "this is not good,” then because we (me and the snow) didn't land, I thought, "What cliff did we go over?”“We should've hit by now. "Then because we still didn't land, I thought, "I guess we shot over the big wall and I’ll die on the rocks below. "But we still didn’t hit. It turned out that we were in the main channel all along, but the gully is so steep and we were moving so fast we were simply in the air for a long time. When we landed, it was a sudden compression, not a crash.

Now until this point the entire mass of snow was moving together. It wasn't churning or turbulent. There actually wasn't much physical damage done to us up to this point, and the snow actually cushioned me in a way. I don't know why I couldn't get to the surface -- maybe things were too loose -- but when the snow imploded I lost everything that was loose -- my hat (which was still on), my sunglasses, my cigar (if I’d had one) and so on. I lost one of my axes at this point, but I kind of remember throwing it because as we landed I saw rocks moving by so fast it was like looking out of the window of an express train and it was still so steep that it seemed like a good idea to try slowing down. I rolled onto my stomach and drove the remaining axe into the hard base below, but the pressure of the oncoming snow blew me off the axe like seeds off a dandelion. The axe didn't slide from my hand -- it just disappeared. I made a mental note to never try that again. I also got my mouth and nose packed with snow which wasn't too hard to clear I guess -- i don't recall the details.

Through the murky light I saw the bottom of Tim’s feet coming toward me. We had been traveling close to each other (although we didn’t know it) and my little axe experiment allowed him to gain on me. What I saw, though, were 24 hardened steel spikes (his crampons). Oddly, he saw the same thing -- his feet bearing down on my head. He rolled his body one way, I rolled the other and either he passed me or he didn't. We don't know because with no warning, we hit the trees.

These are treetops sticking out of the snow, spaced irregularly, and ranging in diameter from mere fractions of an inch thick to four inches or more. Nothing yielded and we never slowed. The snow carried us into the trees and we moved with the snow. Each blow was bone-shatteringly hard. We went limp, rag-dolling from tree to tree. His hip, my thigh, his shoulder, my hand, his foot, my head, and so on. I thought "so I’ll die by being torn apart by the trees. "We didn't slow and we kept on hitting them.

And then we slowed and then we stopped. We were both on the snow, not buried. Tim was only six feet away -- almost within reach. One of my legs was up in the air snagged in the branches of a tree but was still attached to my hip. My body lay across the slope (it was still very steep). Tim was laying up against some trees and was crying out in pain and within seconds lost his vision and began going unconscious. We still had our packs on, but we’d both lost our hats, glasses and axes. I sat up and blood sprayed out of my head onto the snow and my body. We called to each other to confirm the other knew we were each close by.

I did some triage -- was I alive? Did my spine appear broken? Was my skull open to the air? And so on. I freed my leg, which allowed my body to slide over to Tim. I grabbed his hand while he went in and out of consciousness and we reassured each other and then got to the business at hand. Tim was going in and out, and we needed to get warm clothes on before contact with the snow chilled our bodies.

I became aware that a voice that I’d heard in the distance was shouting the same thing and getting slowly louder. I turned and listened and realized it was a skier yelling "CLIMBERS - ON YOUR LEFT! I'M COMING TO YOU!" It was Luke, an Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) caretaker at the cabin. He was on the scene within a minute, radioing to the USFS staff -- two of whom were on their way up to us. Luke did spinal exams and looked for signs of broken bones or internal damage and after a few minutes our wounds were dressed and we were on the move, climbing down the still-steep mountain until we met up with Kevin and Jeff -- who dug resting spots in the slope and then repeated the spinal assessments and looked for other signs of internal organ damage. They were surprised to find us coherent, friendly, aware and perfectly happy to recount the details of the ordeal. They lent us axes to continue the climb down and within 20 minutes we were back in the USFS cabin, getting cleaned up as best as we could.

One almost surreal memory of the walk back was that Jeff and I were walking together while Kevin and Tim followed. We reached the Hermit Lake cabin first, where there was a crowd of people -- all of whom had witnessed the carnage. I didn't know anyone had seen the avalanche, and I didn't know my face and clothing were covered with blood. As we passed the crowd there was total silence -- nobody said a word, and everyone stared, wide-eyed. I didn't really look up, but I didn't know why things were so quiet. I could hear my footsteps in the snow and the steel blades of the crampons rang as they lifted out of the surface. Kevin's axe (which I was carrying) stabbed into the snow– I was using it kind of like a cane and that was all. All those silent faces were watching us.

After patching up our open wounds, the Forest Service drove us down to Pinkham Notch in a snow-cat where we packed up our gear. Then Tim and I drove up to St. Johnsbury to check into the Emergency Room where Sue (my wife) kindly met us and drove us back to the house. Tim stayed on a few days to practice bandaging arms and hands with me.

Injuries are like strange little gremlins. The initial scrapes and bruises are obvious, but over days or weeks other injuries come to light. In our cases (this is written 10 days after the incident), Tim and I ended up with what are remarkably similar injuries that are evolving in remarkably similar ways -- in fact differing only in degree. We both lost a lot of skin on our arms around the elbows -- as one might expect. This was ice rash from attempting to control our body position during the slide. Because we worked to stay on our backs (as we had been taught), the abrasions are on the back of our arms. Tim's knuckles and palms were also shredded (he was not wearing gloves).

Oddly, his arm abrasions are worse than mine even though I was in a short-sleeve shirt and he had long-sleeves. We have no explanation for this. All of our other pains come from pinballing through the trees. We both have knee injuries. Tim has serious tears in his left knee ligaments and he's scheduled for surgery this week. I think I have a tear in my Anterior Crucient Ligament but have yet to have it diagnosed -- kind of a"wait-and-see" approach. Tim bruised his pelvis on the right side in a nearly full-on tree strike. I took a blow to my right thigh that sent me spinning in the snow, followed by a nearly full-on strike to my forehead, leaving a laceration that caused most of the blood loss and a whip-lash from that impact, affecting my neck and shoulders. While big enough to bleed profusely, it required neither stitches nor bandage.

Somewhere in the commotion I sprained my right ankle, but that has all but disappeared. Lastly, contact with the trees cause a number of stabs, slashes and bruises, all of which are superficial. I had ice rash across my face, leaving what looked like claw marks raked across my cheek, eye-lids and eyebrow -- which didn't draw blood and have now disappeared. We both had one black eye and that's about it. Oh, and I cracked the distal phalanx of my fourth finger: the very top, little, tiny finger-bone of my smallest finger on my right hand - my pinkie.

Afterthought: After we decided we weren't dead and were waiting for Luke, I took out my digital camera and took a picture of Tim and a self-portrait. Those pictures show two people completely authentic in the moment -- no mugging for the camera -- no adjustment of hair or smiling or adjusted posture. Tim had just lost consciousness -- his head dropped back and his hands went limp. He was going in and out, and this was a picture of him going out. I didn't plan that -- I just took the pictures. The self-portrait looks like it was taken by somebody else, and the subject had no knowledge of the camera -- like a picture taken in battle. I've never seen myself like that -- so unaware of the camera -- but also being the cameraman at the same time. I captured us in our most vulnerable state -- an intensity that continues to ring like the damp echo of a bell in fog.

I think I’ll always want to capture that again -- and doubt I ever will.