Part 2: "White Death February"

Depth hoar is like having your crazy aunt come for a visit. She stays forever and you just never know when she’s going to snap. Clair Isrealson, Canadian avalanche specialist Look here brother, who you chiving with that cosmic debris? Frank Zappa, Cosmic Debris, 1974 Though this may be play to you, ’Tis death to us. Aesop, Fables Uh, will the wind ever remember The names it has blown in the past, And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom. It whispers, ‘No, this will be the last.’ And the wind cries Mary. Jimi Hendrix, The Wind Cries Mary, 1967

Above: Mazarei airing on the cover of Tua's final catalog . Photo: Mark Shapiro

John-Boy died in an avalanche in la Mouche bowl on February 1st. My visiting high-school buds Fig, Spike and I, had just skied next to where John-Boy and some of the Pub crew were caught. We were ahead of them by 15 minutes. Helicopters with rescue dogs were quickly on the scene but it was too late for John-Boy. Whenever I saw him, usually late night at the Farm Club disco, he would have this knowing smile on his face, a type of smile that said, “I’m so glad I’m out of London,” or something. I didn’t know him well, and now would never get to know him better. We had just skied the same area in knee-deep bliss but as we got the shaky story from one of the crew who had managed to dig herself out, a black veil cast over all of us. I sat her down and looked into her pretty, red-rimmed and shell-shocked eyes, as a shudder coursed through her. We didn’t feel like skiing much after that. By the 5th the third major system arrived and this time it snowed for seven days straight with just a few minor breaks. The snow was piled over the railing on my balcony—the first time I had seen that in 8 years—and we were skiing laps in consistent knee-deep snow to Châble, as well as sneaking in a Bruson tree-day for good measure. On the 9th, the snow was way over the railing and waist-deep with face-shots most of the way to Le Châble. The commune started evacuating people from their exposed million-franc chalets in the middle of the night—220 people next to the beginner’s area of Les Esserts alone. It was the same over much of the Alps. The largest avalanche to hit the Mont Blanc- Chamonix region since 1908 struck between the peaceful hamlets of Montroc and Le Tour on the night of the 9th, destroying 17 chalets and killing 12 people including four children. Five members from one family perished on this horrible night. The slide was reported to have measured about 200 meters wide and traveling about 100 km an hour by the time it hit the structures. It then continued up the other side of the valley into a zone thought to be safe from slides. Mazarei deep in the woods. Finding it in White Death February. Photo by Jancsi Hadik When it was over there was nothing left but stunned rescuers trying frantically to find survivors in the middle of the night. My friend Gary, who lives in Montroc, was out there that fateful night; shovel in hand, doing what he could do. More than 20 people were pulled out alive. Putting on my ski boots the next morning, the television reporter was talking about the largest winter storms to hit the Alps in the last 25 years. It wasn’t yet the middle of the month. Turning my head towards the partially blocked and slightly steamy window, I saw it was snowing 50 centime-sized chunks yet again. Later, Big Tom and I hooked up with our mate Jancsi, and we decided on the classic descent to Châble from a staging area called La Chaux. Once we got there we took one look at all the snow covering the face leading down and agreed it looked like there would be an excellent chance that it would avalanche. Instead, we headed up above an oft-skied bowl called Fontenays and had a whiteout descent through deep snow to the exit road. Part way down the road we found the spot through the trees we had been looking for. We soon realized that tree-wells were a major concern. Things got really exciting as the terrain opened up and we could step on it a bit more. The other worry was the very real threat of actually drowning if you happened to face-plant. Realizing the need to be in control, I focused on skiing tall and pressing, from beginning to end, through the whole turn. All that concentration still didn’t keep me out of a whirlpool tree-well I fell into later that day. I barely got out. It cleared and got cold—for Verbier—the next two days; -20°C (-4°F) at 2100m, and we took advantage by skiing at Champex the first—a very cool three-lift ski station that sports an imposingly steep North-East Face, and lapping Verbier’s front-range couloirs on the snowboard the second. Snowboarding is the best way to give the legs a break from all that telemarking. The awful tragedy at Montroc left many shaking their heads, but little did we know, the Great White juju was just beginning, starting with Valentines Day. For one, it had warmed up considerably. That morning, Tom and I expected to see some slide action because of the temperature but not to the extent of what we actually witnessed. The first thing we saw from the lift was Mont Gelé with all the snow stripped off the front face. It was worse in the giant bowl of Tortin. We skied in and saw something neither of us had seen before, or since. The snow had slid, in large slabs, from every aspect save for a few lanes that were spared here and there. The whole northern side—from col de Chaussure to la Mouche entrance—was stripped down to the December layer, the percolating effect caused by the temperature change shocking in its effect. The westside couloirs as well as most of the Rock Garden were gone. We spied the Jackson Hole boys, Adrian and John, skiing beautiful powder in one of the shaded untouched lanes that lay right under the télécabine. They made it look good but Tom and I opted out, figuring to be prudent. Everywhere we skied we saw the same thing, but ended up having a solid, knee-deep two-star powder day working the “passing lanes” in Gentiane, Vallon d’Arby, and Bas Combe. By the time I got out of our weekly ice hockey match that night, it was snowing hard again. The snow came down five of the next six days, sometimes lightly but mostly substantially. Then the unwelcome foehn moved in and it started raining. Usually the foehn—a katabatic warming phenomenon that occurs from time to time here in the Alps—is not a big deal. Your head gets stuffy, the sewers start smelling a bit, and snowstorms stay over in Italy stopped at the border like a tourist with a forgotten passport. But with all the heavy snowfall from the past weeks, the foehn-caused rain had everyone worried. The rest of the Alps, meanwhile, were also being affected by a general warming trend. It started raining at a dangerously high altitude and didn’t stop for a day and half. Reports of avalanches started trickling in from various sources. Valais Emergency Official Charlie Wuilloud observed, “In one day last week we counted an avalanche every twenty minutes.” Three major avalanches struck on the day of the 21st of February. The first above the town of Bex didn’t cause extensive damage. The second struck the village of Evolène located in the Val d’Herens. “The avalanche rolled into the valley like a bulldozer and crushed everything,” said Wuilloud. Nine chalets were hit and twelve were confirmed dead, but only after some days had passed. Family members of a German couple on holiday reported to officials that the two had not called home in some time. They were last spotted in a gas station prior to entering the valley and were found a few days later swept off the road and buried in their car. While rescuers were evacuating more than 200 people from the valley, a 23 year-old town worker was found with his 22 year-old girlfriend buried in his snowplow while he was out doing his job. I saw their pictures in the newspaper a few days later—they were to be married within the month.

“C’est en effet un miracle qu’il n’y ait pas eu de morts,” said Guy Vaudan, President of the Commune de Bagnes.

He was right, it was a miracle that no one was killed in the third major avalanche—this one impacting the village of Lourtier, up valley from Verbier—that fateful day. This one was a series of five avalanches that started with two smaller ones from the day before peeling off of the southwest aspect of the Bec des Rosses and traveling the drainage 6000 vertical feet all the way to the village bridge. Dale Atkins from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center explains, “…the problem in all of the Alpine countries (now) is just simply too much snow too fast. And now there’s also tremendous quantities of snow down on the valley floors. Once an avalanche starts running it entrains tremendous quantities of snow and then can run far out into the valley floors and hit the villages.”

The Lourtier Avalanche--A series of five avalanches traveling 6000 vertical feet. Photo--The Dranses

A third slide came down just before noon of the 21st. By now the Lourtierains were hoping that it was over but a penultimate, larger slide came down at 4:40pm cutting the village in two. An enormous, final avalanche followed this, unbelievably, at 7pm. One brand new chalet got swept away—fortunately the owners hadn’t moved in yet—as well as part of the village school. The 10 meter high debris squeezed—like Play-Doh through the Fun Factory (Squeeze, shape, mold and extrude all kinds of crazy shapes…!)—through the small streets and in between the buildings on either side of the main path.

Thirty-one people died, some in their homes, others on ski holiday. Children playing in the street.

As the effort was in full swing, another killer avalanche cut loose six miles away in the same Paznaun Valley above the village of Valzur. More homes were flattened and seven more died. (It was estimated that 20,000 were snowbound in Austria and another 60,000 in Switzerland during this cycle.) Tyrolean Tourist Authority spokesman, Joseph Margrieter explained what happened, “The problem was the wind, which shoveled tons and tons of snow upon the ridge above the town. Then there was the rise in temperature. And it rained with the snow.”

Martin Schneebeli of the Swiss Federal Institute for the Study of Snow and Avalanches, based in Davos, explains further: “Four weather fronts within a few weeks brought heavy snow, and it was blown by northwest winds, so it accumulated on the sheltered side of the mountains.”