Excerpt: Chapter 16 - Avalanche!

“The anecdotal evidence suggests that Adirondack avalanches represent more of a threat than winter adventurers realize…” - James Vermeulen, “Slides Rules.” Adirondack Life.

“I never thought I’d see a death in the High Peaks from an avalanche.” – Peter Benoit, Former President, Lower Adirondack Search and Rescue

On Saturday, February 19, 2000—a beautiful winter day with clear, blue skies and temperatures in the 20s —six friends left the Adirondack Loj parking lot bound for Wright Peak. Their plan was to ski to Marcy Dam and then head off-trail toward the base of Wright. During the previous summer, torrential rains from Hurricane Floyd had caused a number of landslides throughout the Adirondacks, forming new slides in the High Peaks. A side-by-side pair on Wright Peak—a taller, narrower slide on skier’s left, and shorter, wider slide on skier’s right—were among them, and the sextet of backcountry skiers planned to ski them both.

At 45 years old, Ron Konowitz was the eldest member of the group and the most experienced. A consummate outdoorsman, he loved the woods, and he took great joy in hiking, paddling and rock and ice climbing. And he especially loved to ski. Konowitz even became the first person to ski all forty-six of the High Peaks, a feat he accomplished for no other reason than his own personal satisfaction. He had also logged a more than 20-year history of doing search-and-rescue volunteer work throughout the Adirondacks.

That February day, he was joined by his 29-year-old wife, Lauren, who worked as a physician’s assistant in operating rooms at Lake Placid Hospital. Less than a year earlier, in August of 1999, the couple had been married on the summit of Algonquin Peak, which neighbors Wright as part of the MacIntyre Range. Their dog, Otis, acted as the best man.

At the Loj parking lot, the couple and their dog met up with friends Rohan Roy, who had worked at the Loj for years, and Christina Ford, a former assistant forest ranger. They suited up for the day, stepping into their bindings and fitting their backcountry skis with skins – synthetic material stretched over the base of the skis allowing them to slide forward but not backward, permitting the group to climb uphill in their skis. While they finalized preparations for the day, the four friends and Otis coincidentally bumped into 26-year-old Russ Cook and 27-year-old Toma Vcarich. As the friends chatted with Cook and Vcarich, whom they had met only once before, they discovered the two men were also headed for the Wright Peak slides. The two separate groups opted to merge into one party, and prepared for a day of fresh-powder skiing.

It had been consistently cold over the preceding 6 weeks. That Monday, a storm had dumped 2 feet of fresh snow on the MacIntyre Range, and the night before—on Friday—an additional 6 inches had fallen.

Earlier in the day on Friday, a group of forest rangers from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) had been over at Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont taking a class in avalanche preparedness. It was part of New York State’s increased efforts to address what it perceived to be a serious hazard and liability in the mountains. In Avalanche Pass , between Mount Colden and the MacIntyre Range, the DEC had already posted a warning sign, well before snow began to blanket the ground. The warning alerted hikers and snowshoers to the threat of an avalanche from above on the Avalanche Pass Slide, since the trail passed directly beneath it and efforts to reroute the trail through a safer section of the pass had proven unsuccessful. The state wanted its rangers trained in avalanche preparedness and appropriate rescue procedures, should unwary hikers get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time by an avalanche in the pass or elsewhere.

The snow at Smuggler’s Notch that Friday had been unstable, with a threat of triggered avalanches. A reporter covering the training asked New York State Forest Ranger Jim Giglinto whether there was a potential for avalanches in the Adirondacks. “Possibly,” he responded. “It could happen anywhere.” They were five words casually uttered in the middle of an interview. But just a day later, they would prove tragically prophetic.

All six backcountry skiers had completed a run down the taller, narrower of the two new slides when they took a break to eat lunch. Lauren, in fact, had even taken two laps on the slide. She was a strong skier and highly motivated that day, Ron said, and she “took off” faster than the others as the group skinned up from Marcy Dam to the base of the slide.

Even before that Saturday, some members of the group had already visited the slide on skis. Lauren skied it the day before, on Friday, and Ron and Lauren had skied it together the Saturday before that. Toma Vcarich had also been up on the slide previously. The shorter, wider slide, which they planned to ski after lunch, was another story—Saturday, February 19 would be the first time anyone in the group skied down it.

Roy was the first to go down it, “hootin’ and hollerin’” the whole way, while the others still sat at the base finishing their lunches. Then they all climbed up to the top together to take their turn in the 2.5 feet of fresh powder that sat on the slide. In Ron Konowitz’s words, they would be “farming” the slide—taking turns skiing the slide, starting from the right side and moving slightly to the left with each successive run to preserve the untracked powder. When everyone had had their turn, they’d skin back to the top and take a second run.

With the group together at the top, having eaten lunch and witnessed Roy’s first run, Ron was the first to head down. He was soon followed by Lauren, who stopped alongside him about 100 vertical feet down the slide. Then came Cook, who made six or seven turns, and was about fifty vertical feet above Ron and Lauren, when his binding—a Vole releasable telemark binding —broke. Ron reached into his daypack to pull out a screwdriver to help fix Cook’s ski while Vcarich started coming down, with Roy watching from above. Ford, meanwhile, was out of sight above the top of the slide.

Being the fourth person to come down, Vcarich was toward the middle of the slide, where the snow ran over a slightly steeper section. He was about three turns into his run when he fell.

It isn’t clear whether his fall caused an avalanche, or whether the slope avalanching caused him to fall. But when Ron and Lauren, standing side by side, looked up from their lower position on the slide, they saw a fracture line propagate out horizontally from Vcarich, 150 feet in both directions. Then they felt the snow slope settle, and heard an audible whoompf.

A slab avalanche was coming down on them. “I remember seeing chunks [of snow] floating in it like a river as it came towards us,” Ron remembers. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. Then my next thought was that we’re all gonna die.”

They never had a chance to get out of the way. Within 3 seconds of releasing, a slab avalanche can reach speeds of up to 20 miles per hour (MPH), and within another 3 seconds it can hit 80 MPH—much faster than most people can ski, and certainly faster than Ron and Lauren could ski starting from a dead stop just 100 feet below the fracture line. The snow slope beneath their skis started to move—and then swallowed them into the bowels of the avalanche...