Fifth of November, 2000. Sunday, nine o’clock
in the morning. After 4 days of bad weather the sun is out. Lots
of fresh snow, 14° below zero (C). Conditions are great and
we are all "forced" to go out for an excursion.
The idea was to have a weekend up on the glacier,
a weekend that was to be the last of the summer season, soon
the road would close. This past fall keeping the road open was
a challenge due to heavy snow falls throughout October. A situation,
we Europeans and Italians on the South side of the Alps had not
experienced much during the last decade.
Eleven of us on our tele skis started skinning
up a wonderful and steep mountain. After an hour and a half we
reached the top. 700 vertical meters from the road to the summit.
Not a bad time considering we had to break trail through 50 cm
of new soft snow.
After a drink and few photos the group started
skiing. They skied the first easy 50 meters then they stopped.
There the face became steep,
I guess something around 40°. I went last. After a whole
Spring and Summer always on tele skis (in winter I’m a ski
instructor and I have to use the Alpine gear when teaching) I
feel good and ski really well. The deep soft snow, a 12 month
old memory, is back and a reality all around me. The friction
it causes on my skis and boots help me control my speed. I choose
a line very close to the fall line. I pass the others standing
there watching me ski. Right in front of me a perfect couloir
opens up. I can see that what is waiting ahead is steep, but
everything is so perfect. So white and perfect.
Suddenly everything slows down, cracks open
up around my skis. It’s an avalanche! I turn my head, hoping
not to discover that it has started above me. What I see is the
snow jumping and flying over some rocks. I’m in the middle
of it! No chance to stop. I turn my head to the valley. I know
right away that I still have two chances: one is to ski for the
side of the slide, the other option is to run straight down.
It takes me but a fraction of a second to understand that option
one is no longer an option at all, it’s a wide slide, I
can't even see the sides of it. A quick look down and a wave
of depression comes over me. The whole slope is moving and it’s
bloody steep. I know I shall not be able to ski all this distance
standing up.
I’m still in the transition between being
a skier and an object brought down by the stream of snow. My
mind is running faster then what is happening. The margins between
what I can do and what will happen are shrinking. 700 meters
below I see the slope getting flat, there it is sunny, this face
is in the shadow. Speed is low and in front I see 2 waves of
snow. It must be the snow sliding over some rocks. I try to lean
back and use my hands to keep my balance, as I reach the first
wave I’m off. Just before disappearing into the snow I swear:
"I'm going to die suffocating! What a f… way to die.
It will be horrible. F… "
The premonition of suffocating becomes reality
as soon as the snow is around my face. I place my right hand
in front of the mouth. I must try to keep it away from me. My
left hand must stay out on the surface. I must swim, they must
see me.
The pressure of the snow is constant, as well
as the idea that I shall die suffocating. My mind is distracted
from this horrible idea by the crashes I'm having. I’m rolling
down the mountain and each time I land, either on my head or
on my legs it’s painful. Somehow it is welcome, it distracts
me from the feeling of the snow on my face. I swim and realize
that I should swim better with 2 hands but as soon as I use both
there’s too much snow around my mouth. I feel quite a lot
of pain in one knee but there’s no time to consider it more
and continuous crashes give me something else to feel and think
about.
For 1 or 2 minutes I’ve been under the
snow, within it, rolling down the mountain. I have never seen
light or sky during the whole period. Only the white of the snow,
sometimes darker sometimes whiter. Then from the chaos is stillness.
I feel my right hand out of the debris. I must have 40/50 cm
of snow above me. The snow that day was so beautiful, soft with
all its crystals shining in the sun and even now it is still
beautiful. The reason is it's lightness. My hand can move and
I can dig it away from my face. First I see the blue of the sky,
then I shovel away the snow from my mouth. This takes time. I
give a stroke and try to breath but I still have snow getting
into my mouth. F… back again comes the fear of suffocating.
2, 3, 4 more strokes and luckily I'm free, I can breath. I can
breath.
There is no time to be happy. What has happened
to the others? I shake my torso, get it out of the snow, a quick
look up the mountain and I can count only 5 others then they
are 6, 7, 8 … 10. One is missing. Some friends reach me
and help me. My left knee is really hurting now. After a while
the 11th appears. He was 100 meters away from me, he gave no
sign of being alive until reached by another in our party. We
are all alive. I can breath. I can breath.
The avalanche has been 700 meters long with
a front of 300 meters. Four persons have been involved, the other
7 have not. Two have come down 300 meters and then stopped on
the top of a roll over. One, the only one with AT skis and bindings
has come down 600 meters with no injuries. Me, the donkey, in
the avalanche the whole way down, on tele skies and bindings,
I dislocated my left knee. Which means broken crossed ligaments,
broken lateral ones, smashed meniscus… but for sure I'm
alive!
Conclusions:
For 20 years I’ve been living in the
mountains. Every year I had the knowledge of the snow conditions,
I knew what was the story of the snow, the metamorfismo. I could
look out of the window and just by a glance consider that a small
avalanche on the mountain in front of my house meant danger everywhere.
This Summer I got a new job in Milan. That day I was on holiday
and I had no knowledge of the snow, I mean the knowledge you
can have only if you live in the place where you ski.
On a few other occasions I have been involved
in small avalanches, I always managed to run ahead of them, this
time it was too big. Climbing, skiing, and sailing has taught
me not to panic unless it’s really time to call myself lost.
That day, as everyone has understood, my problem was the idea
of suffocating. My mind was ahead of the moment I was living.
I could do little to avoid that. One hand in front of the mouth,
the other swimming… today I think it was clever but I’m
positive I would have loved to be able to do something else.
What I mean is: wearing a beacon is basic but for the one in
the avalanche it is a passive object. I would have loved to have
had lots of things to try to do. Like: sticking the tube of an
Avalung in my mouth, and/or opening up an Air Bag system. I would
have loved to have been active.
Once caught in an avalanche non-releasable
tele bindings are not the best, the other guy with releasable
bindings did not get hurt. One of the other two, both on tele,
ripped a knee ligament too. I don’t know if it might have
been a better idea to open the bindings as I knew I had no chance
to ski away. There is quite a lot of time from the moment the
snow starts falling down and the moment you get tilted over into
the snow.
My good luck was the quality of the snow,
soft and not the kind to kill me by smashing me, and not too
soft so as to fill my lungs during the slide down. The avalanche
was a surface one, 50 cm of new snow slipped over a layer of
old snow. The face slid down like a carpet, snow was sliding
ahead of me and behind me too, this gave me the chance not to
get covered by more snow once I stopped. We were at a high Pass
near Livigno, the place were I used to live, no houses below
the mountain, no cars, no people. With this avalanche we had
not been a danger to anyone except ourselves.
Post Script:
I’m out for the whole winter and it’s
a pity because for the first time in many years we are the only
country with a lot of snow in all Alps and I cannot ski. I know
it will be hard later in the season when I shall start meeting
friends with stories about their skiing but it’s not such
a problem. I'm alive. I hope to be able to ski next season.
If I could be at the top of a nice face now
… I would ski down immediately.
If it was that mountain in particular … well, I don’t
know.