Buried is not a book about being buried in an avalanche.
Yes, author Ken Wylie was buried in an avalanche. And for the first 80 intense, gripping pages, he describes in detail from his perspective as the assistant guide leading a group of backcountry skiers climbing up a slope in B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains in 2003, the avalanche that buried him and took the lives of seven skiers.
Continuing beyond that day, however, Buried unveils how Wylie struggled for years to gain understanding of his role in the avalanche.
He began writing because he felt a deep need to apologize to the families of the seven victims, which included Canmore chef Jean-Luc Schwendener and snowboarding superstar Craig Kelly. Much of the story is devoted to the situation of the workplace he found himself in.
As an assistant guide eager to please, Wylie said his personality allowed him to be easily intimidated by forceful people, which contributed to the avalanche incident.
“I remember not feeling comfortable at all, every cell in my body was screaming not to go into that terrain,” Wylie said. “I followed as an assistant guide perceiving I had no choice.”
Humans, he stated, can intellectualize just about anything.
“In our current reality, we think too much,” Wylie said. “We can rationalize our way into tragedy. By thinking too much we fail to really hear what is going on.”
Writing, he said, led him to reflect on various events in his life that ultimately revealed seven lessons, one for each of the victims.
“If I fail to reflect, I’m not different from my gear,” Wylie said. “On every backcountry adventure a person takes their gear out to travel the landscape, then at the end of the day the skis, packs, ropes are put away. Gear just wears out. The reflection piece is the growth piece, the expansion piece.”
One lesson illuminated is how he found it easier to be physically courageous, or to make a decision that put him or others in danger, than to speak up against popular opinion.
“I wanted a stamp of approval. I wanted that guide’s certificate. I wanted in the club,” Wylie said. “That’s not necessarily what I was meant to be there for. I was meant to be there for my guests, and to keep them safe.”
For the first seven years afterward, Wylie said he looked outward for answers, pointing fingers and accepting medical solutions. His marriage ended as he avoided facing the reality that he bore any responsibility for the accident.
“We believe that we can compartmentalize, that we can operate as a consummate professional and leave all of our personal weaknesses at home,” Wylie said. “I recognized that I made all kinds of errors and they were based on my personal biases and my weaknesses and my patterns that didn’t really serve me.”
An especially illuminating passage in the book describes a climbing trip to Peru. Wylie had left Canada with a crack in one of his crampons. While he and his partner prepared for their climb, three Swiss climbers were involved in an accident that left one dead and another injured.
Watching the Peruvian guides walk by carrying the dead man, Wylie writes, “Sadly, I felt nothing for the man, only the fear that if I felt anything for him at all, I might lose my motivation and have to go home. I watched the scene, but all I saw was a perfectly good pair of crampons sliding by me and on down to the valley.”
Such memories, he said, helped him realize his difficulty in connecting emotionally with people.
“Climbing, for me, was a long suicide, a long journey out of depression,” Wylie explained. “I was a climber; that was everything about me. Now, I would say I’m a person who climbs. There’s a big distinction.”
A guide and educator who now works with former military personnel, Wylie said while some of the victims’ families are supportive of the book, others are not.
“One of the difficulties is that our stories are intertwined,” Wylie said. “The story that I wrote in the book includes (the owner) and includes both of our behaviours. I think it was critical that I share that dynamic so that it becomes something that not only me, but people who recreationally backcountry ski and people who work as professionals in this industry, can use that as a mirror and it helps them discover that these dynamics can be deadly.
As they skinned up a slope, Wylie said, the guest behind him, Vern Lunsford, expressed doubts about skiing there.
“Is it ethical to push people into situations they might have an intuitive hit about? I live with that. Vern died.”
Through the book, Wylie said he hoped to encourage dialogue between those in the guiding industry, adding improvements are being made.
“Any guide worth their salt knows they can make errors. We are human,” Wylie said. “We tend to be hierarchical in how we manage our guiding teams, and I think that playing field needs to level more so that more information is shared between guides. Of course, there are times, in a critical or crisis situation where the guide has to have the definitive say and take action. Hierarchy leads to chaos but it’s the only way out of chaos.
“My hope is that we start taking a good look at ourselves and improving our systems even more.”
Writing the book, Wylie said, feels like a positive step.
“I was buried before, during and after the avalanche. Through the process of writing the book, I unburied myself.”
Wylie will sign copies of Buried at the Banff Mountain Film Festival on Saturday (Nov. 8) from 3-4 p.m. at the Laszlo Funtek wing of the Banff Centre.
