Avalanche Incident
Avalanche Incident
Monday, April 20, 1998
SNOWPACK:
Two snowshoers were injured, one critically, on Berthoud Pass yesterday. It is unclear at this time if the critically injured woman was actually caught in the slide or fell down the steep slope trying to get to her partner who had an injured shoulder. Also, one rescuer triggered a small slide trying to get to them.
Two skiers triggered a slide on the Stanley avalanche path that stopped just short of Highway 40 on the E side of Berthoud Pass. A skier triggered an avalanche near the Loveland Ski Area later in the day. A few natural events were also spotted along the I-70 corridor. These slides ranged from 6" to 3-6 deep and were on E-SE aspects near & above timberline. Avalanche control on the east side of the 10-Mile Range near Breckenridge also produced shallow slabs from recent drifting above treeline. The recent new snow and windloading is the main reason for these slides. A thin, weak layer of dry snow that was overlaid with a shallow wind slab appears to be the main ingredient for the instability.
By Jim Hughes and Andrew Simons, The Denver Post
April 20 - A man and woman snowshoeing above Berthoud Pass apparently triggered an avalanche Sunday that left the woman critically hurt and the man banged up.
The pair were in Pump House Gulch on the east face of Russell Peak near the Berthoud Pass ski area when the slope slid from underneath them between 1 and 1:20 p.m.
The woman, a 30-year-old from Denver, was listed in critical and unstable condition at Centura St. Anthony Central Hospital on Sunday evening with head, neck and pelvic injuries. The man, a 28-year-old from Missouri, was listed in good condition there. His exact injuries were not known.
Their names were not released.
Neither was buried by the slide. The man hiked down to U.S. 40, which crosses the pass between Empire and Winter Park. He hitched a ride with two doctors back up to the ski resort to report the slide. He was treated at the resort's clinic before being taken by ambulance to Denver.
Sunday marked the second time this season that emergency officials responded to an avalanche in the Berthoud Pass area. On March 1, snowboarder Daniel Kim, a 20-year-old University of Colorado student, died in a slide near Pump House Gulch.
"It's real tough. A lot of people are not aware of how bad the area can be," Steve Bromberg, manager of the Berthoud Pass ski area, said Sunday.
"We try to educate everyone that we can talk to, but there's always that danger out there, especially when there's that much snow up there." The area had received about 20 inches of snow since Wednesday, Bromberg said.
Within 20 minutes of learning of the slide, Berthoud Pass resort ski patrollers were climbing to the area where the man said his companion was lying unconscious. After spotting her through binoculars, searchers approached carefully, wary of setting off another slide.
"It was extreme out there, to be honest," Bromberg said. "They had to take a lot of precautions just to go out there the right way so they wouldn't trigger any more avalanches." As the rescue crew snowshoed up to the injured woman, they saw small avalanches on nearby slopes, rescuer Steve Wilson said.
As they approached her, they kept an eye on the sun-weakened cornices above, which could have broken off and triggered more slides.
She was flown to Denver in a Flight for Life helicopter.
Aiding in the rescue were Clear Creek County sheriff's deputies, state patrol officers, area ambulance and search and rescue crews, Forest Service personnel and ski patrollers from the Berthoud Pass and Loveland ski areas.
The slopes around Berthoud Pass are known to seasoned backcountry enthusiasts and state highway officials as avalanche-prone.
Steep, susceptible to high winds and scarred by avalanche paths, the terrain often is the site of slides that can close U.S. 40.
Backcountry avalanche conditions, which usually stabilize through spring meltoff, became more dangerous last week with the arrival of winter-storm conditions. One ski patrol member said Sunday that conditions in the high country are fairly treacherous for this time of year.
"The springtime is notoriously more of a safer time to travel in the backcountry because the snow is (stabilizing)," said the patroller, who asked not to be identified.
"But it's still early, and we've pretty much gone back to winter with the cold temperatures and the amount of snow we've been getting." The recorded message at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center on Sunday morning informed callers planning backcountry excursions that the chances of an avalanche were low below treeline but moderate above.
"The whole point to a story like this is to tell people that avalanche danger is still there, even this late in the season," Wilson said.
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