IMAGINE this. You can’t move an inch. It feels like tonnes of cement have instantly solidified around your entire body. As you struggle to keep the snow at bay and away from your face, it relentlessly keeps filling your mouth and nose, blocking your airway as you gasp for precious oxygen. All you can hear, besides deathly silence, is yourself trying to breathe; inhaling and exhaling become closer together and more varied the more you panic. Although surrounded with the whitest of white snow, all you can see is black darkness. You don’t know what way is up and what way is down. It’s bitter cold because your body is entombed in a giant freezer, also causing your breaths to become faster and more erratic. Perhaps the most frightening thing of all is that you don’t know if anyone will pull you from this frozen hell in time. This is the reality of being trapped in an avalanche, a powerful and unforgiving force of Mother Nature.
Niseko local and former patroller Ross Carty has been called out to somewhere between 20 or 30 avalanche rescues in his long tenure at Hirafu, Annapuri, and Sahoro in central Hokkaido. Also, in the late ‘80s, Ross says that he may have even been the first patroller at Australia’s Thredbo to do his patrols on a snowboard. Some of his calls to avalanche emergency sites haven’t been so serious. However, in others, people have died. Perhaps most recently, and seriously, was in 1999, when Ross went to the rescue of three snowshoers and two mountain guides trapped in an avalanche at Niseko’s Haru no Taki (summer waterfall) bowl, the out of bounds area to the viewer’s left of Hirafu. After being trapped under snow for an hour and 20 minutes, one of the snowshoers died. The other, and the two guides, were all lucky to survive.
When asked to describe what it is like being trapped in an avalanche, Ross drew on the many testimonials he has heard over the years from people he has spoken to after pulling them to safety. “I would call it scary as hell,” says Ross, owner of NOASC Outdoor Adventures in Niseko. “I can’t really describe it in words, all I know is it isn’t an experience you want to get into.” One recurring theme in all Ross’ descriptions is a feeling of hopelessness – being completely out of control. “In an avalanche, you don’t know if you are going to hit something like a rock or a tree, or whether you are going to end up on top or underneath the snow,” he says. “People say try to swim in the avalanche, but you can only really do that in dry and fluffy snow. The wet snow is just too powerful and you can get flung around like a rag doll. When you finally come to a halt you are left wondering do I still have my legs and arms, can I feel them, am I bruised or broken? If people arrive you can sometimes hear voices of people calling out, or the sound of people digging, but mostly you can just hear nothing.”
Highlighting the local dangers, Ross says Niseko’s generally modest vertical rise is cause for concern and can be quite deceiving. “Most of the slopes here range from between 25 and 40 degrees, which is in the most dangerous range, because anything over 45 degrees tends to shed itself, and anything under 25 degrees means snow won’t often fall at a threatening speed, or at all,” he says. “Niseko’s slopes sit between 25 and 35 degrees, the most dangerous range. It is common for snow to build up in areas and for cornices to break off in Niseko as well.”
Although Ross has performed many rescues, he has only been trapped in one avalanche himself on his own time. It wasn’t a bad one, but it could have been worse. Knowledge and experience meant Ross could make the best out of a bad situation, just outside Queenstown in New Zealand. This is proof, though, that even with about 30 years of experience in the snow on skis, snowboards and telemarking – many of those years as a patroller – things can still go wrong. “I was at the Remarkables,” recounts Ross. “I dropped in around a back chute and jumped in off a cornice. The snow broke down, funnelled down the chute and spread about 20m below. I was half-buried up to my chest, but didn’t sink under because I knew to try and stay on top of the avalanche. I’m lucky that in all my years in the back country, that was my worst personal experience”