Hi Friends,
Since I learned to ski when I was a little girl, the year has always felt divided in two—ski season and waiting for ski season. Though our resorts are now open due to snowmaking, we’re still waiting for snow. I’m still hoping that this winter will turn out to be like the last one, where we skied well into the summer, but so far, the only skiing available is limited terrain on artificial snow at the resorts.
While I appreciate the convenience of riding lifts at the resort (and their snowmaking capabilities), I love the freedom of skiing in the backcountry.
Backcountry skiing, of course, is not without some danger. To be sure, the avalanche danger is always on our minds when we enter the backcountry, but the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced had nothing to do with an avalanche, though I did end up stuck in the snow and had to figure out how to get myself unstuck.
I ended up stuck in a hole, up to my neck in snow, and every time I tried to move, I slipped further down, closer to the creek below. I remained calm, maybe because I knew if I panicked, it would make matters worse, and I couldn’t afford for things to get any worse. Multiple feet of snow had fallen a few days before, and the snow settled enough that the avalanche danger in the backcountry had decreased from High to Moderate. Though we were both experienced backcountry skiers with avalanche training, my friend Tammy and I chose a low-angle route through the trees in an area we knew well.
The storm had moved out, and the early morning air snapped cold and elastic against our cheeks, but the springtime sun quickly scaled the sky. We cut trail first across the flat Grass Lake and then made our way up the mountain, not far from my home in South Lake Tahoe. A track had not yet been cut, so we slogged through the new snow, taking turns cutting the path up the mountain. I followed Tammy for a while. She’s an ultra-marathon runner, but even so, she was soon winded, climbing through the heavy snow.
The morning sun caught in the surface crystals, reflecting blue-yellow in a million tiny ice mirrors. As the sun laddered the sky, snow melted from tree branches and fell around us. My ski poles kept breaking through the snow, the layers on top heavier than the snow below. “Be careful,” I told Tammy. “This snow feels sort of rotten. My poles keep getting swallowed.”
“I know,” Tammy said, “mine are too.”
I noticed what looked like an established up-track in the distance. “Does that look like a track?”
Tammy agreed that it did. It was in the shadows across a snow-covered creek.
“I think there’s enough snow that crossing here will be fine, but let’s go one at a time, just to be safe,” I said. Tammy agreed to stay back until I reached the other side.
I shuffled over a snow bridge draped over granite boulders. The naked branches of mountain alder poked through. I was nearly to the other side, maybe ten feet from where the creek ended when the snow shifted below my skis. I stopped, then felt a slumping beneath me. “Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no.”
Tammy saw what was happening—what was about to happen—because she shouted, “Come back, come back.”
I couldn’t turn around, and I was closer to the other side now, so I said, “I can’t,” and right then, a whoomping sound pulsed beneath my skis, collapsing the snow bridge, as if a trap door fell open.