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Lucky to be alive |
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Written by Sherri Gallant Lethbridge Herald
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Monday, March 15 2010, 9:22 PM |
After surviving the deadly avalanche that killed two of his friends near Revelstoke Saturday, Nathan Knox isn’t sure if he’ll replace his two mangled snowmobiles — but he hasn’t ruled it out.
“It’s a risk you take, and everybody knows it — it was terrible, but if you get in a car accident, do you rule out driving again?” said Knox, from his Calgary home.
“If you’re watching the news you’ll see a graveyard of snowmobiles that are still out there, and my two are in there somewhere. The RCMP are supposed to call and let me know if they’re salvageable.”
Knox — who was raised in Lethbridge and worked at the Lethbridge Herald for eight years — and his fiancee Lyndsay Judd were attending the annual Big Iron Shoot-Out, an unsanctioned extreme snowmobiling event held at Boulder Mountain. He bought a pair of sleds and took up snowmobiling this year, mainly as a way to get outdoors on the weekends and enjoy the mountains with Judd.
“Mine was more for jumping and trees on the flatter areas, it doesn’t have enough power to go up the side of those big mountains,” said Knox. “That’s why I was watching when this happened. There was a group of 10 of us, and the two guys who passed away were both in my group.”
The dead men, business partners from the Strathmore area, have been identified as Shay Snortland and Kurtis Reynolds, both 33.
“What happened was Shay went to climb up the mountainside and got stuck at the top,” said Knox. “The other nine of us were sitting there watching at the bottom, because we were waiting for him to come down. And that’s when another sled went up to the right and then it broke loose, and the avalanche hit us all.”
Reynolds had been standing beside Knox when the torrent came down, and was killed.
“Shay came all the way down. He probably died on the way down. The other guy was a foot away from me, and I don’t know why he died and I’m still here. My girlfriend got kicked out about 20 feet past me. It doesn’t sweep you up, it hammers you, like the hand of God, it just smashes you and you’re nothing but a rag doll. It’s a nightmare. But my girlfriend and I both walked away.”
At first, laying there with his leg twisted, Knox was unable to walk and could only listen to the crescendo of panic that began to rise from the survivors.
“For the first four or five minutes all you could hear was people screaming,” he recalled. “The avalanche beacons have to be switched to search, and if they’re not switched to search they go off on everybody else. So for that little bit everyone was yelling and screaming at the people who weren’t switched to search. Finally everybody got their marbles together and started probing the snow.
“When I look back, I was too green. I shouldn’t have parked where we were because we were kind of at the bottom. If I would have been up the hill 30 feet — you don’t get as good a view — but if I wouldn’t been up the hill higher it would have gone right by us. It was like a war zone, like a bomb went off, and then you just start looking for your friends.”
Dozens of sledders among the group of about 200 had stopped to watch from what they thought was a safe distance, but it wasn’t. While some believe it was high-marking that started the avalanche, RCMP haven’t confirmed that. High-marking is when a snowmobiler attempts to ride as far as possible up a steep slope, then turn and come down without rolling or stalling on the hill. Part of the challenge to make the highest mark with one’s tracks in the unblemished snow.
“Everybody was looking for people. So the first person I saw, which was a relief, was my fiancee. And then after that she started screaming that she couldn’t find people, but I couldn’t walk so I couldn’t do anything for a while.“
The snow that crashed down from Boulder Mountain wasn’t fluffy stuff, Knox said — more like chunks of concrete, tumbling like the inside of a clothes dryer with people and snow machines, broken trees, helmets and gear. Injuries were catastrophic, with survivors being treated for broken bones, severe cuts and tissue trauma.
Thirty one people were sent to the hospital, one in critical condition. The death toll could easily have risen beyond two but for the quick rescue efforts of fellow snowmobilers. RCMP say they have accounted for all those known to have been there, but a final probe was to be conducted Monday just to be sure no one was missed.
The Canadian Avalanche Centre had issued warnings about the high avalanche risk in the area, but Knox said he doesn’t recall hearing any talk of avalanche risk on Saturday. There were 19 snowmobile avalanche deaths in Canada last year in 11 separate avalanches in B.C., eight of them in one event near Sparwood.
Avalanche Safety Training 1 is available in the Lethbridge area and groups like the Crow Snow Riders, a Crowsnest Pass club, encourage anyone going out in the backcountry to take the course. For information on qualified instructors, visit www.crowsnow.org
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