A female skier is lucky to be alive after being buried for 10 to 15 minutes in avalanche debris near Moraine Lake, April 5.
A female skier is lucky to be alive after being buried for 10 to 15 minutes in avalanche debris near Moraine Lake, April 5.
A group of three skiers were ascending a slope on the south east side of Sentinel Pass above Moraine Lake when a skier in the group triggered a size 2.5 avalanche.
According to Parks Canada, the avalanche was 200 metres wide, 20-40 cm deep, and carried one of the skiers 200 metres down the slope before burying her in by about 3.5 metres of snow and debris.
The rest of the group were prepared with avalanche self-rescue equipment and were able to locate the skier with a transceiver and dig her out in about 10 to 15 minutes. The skier was uninjured.
"It was a big, deep hole and a very close call," said Steve Holeczi, a visitor safety specialist with Parks Canada.
"A burial of that depth for those guys to get her out in the time they did is an amazing job."
He said the group had just finished doing their last switch back and were doing one long traverse near the col when the skier leading the group triggered the avalanche.
As a result, two of the skiers were swept up in the avalanche, with one skier being buried up their thighs while the skier at the back of the group got swept down the mountain and buried.
"It wasn't a very deep avalanche, but the way the terrain goes it's a wide slope and at the bottom it just goes into this terrain trap so that's why all the snow buried her that deep," said Holeczi.
The group immediately activated a satellite emergency device alerting Parks Canada visitor safety specialists and the RCMP. Visitor safety specialists immediately responded to the alert and were able to land on the avalanche debris and transport the entire party to Lake Louise.
"We didn't know a lot of the details as we were going in we had actually called in a dog handler from Emergency Management B.C. from Golden in a another helicopter and we had also had some Lake Louise staff from the ski hill on standby just incase we needed them - neither of which was used."
The woman was uninjured and refused care before being taken home by her friends. STARS air ambulance was also dispatched but was quickly stood down.
Holeczi said the layer the avalanche slide on was the March 15 sun crust.
"We haven't seen it go that big, but it got buried on March 15 when we had that warmer weather and then we've had some snow on top. Again it wasn't deep, but it was able to propagate a pretty wide distance."
He urged anyone who is considering venturing into the backcountry to keep checking Parks Canada's avalanche bulletin on its website, particularly as the temperatures begin to rise.
