Avalanche
A 28-year old Bozeman man died in a small avalanche Saturday afternoon, just north of Big Sky, Montana.
Jens Anderson, along with three friends, was skiing the Hanging Garden couloir on Beehive Peak. Anderson went first and triggered the slide. He was swept over a large rock face, and tragically died of trauma.
Madison County Sheriff Roger Thompson said Anderson’s brother, a physician, was one of the three men skiing along with him. Anderson’s brother pronounced him dead at the scene.
A member of the party made a long climb to a ridge top in order to make a cell phone call to 911. Rescuers were able to find a short window in the weather to access the site via helicopter to evacuate Mr. Anderson before wind and snow closed in.
According to GNFAC, the group of four had been watching the weather all week and reading the avalanche advisory in order to find the perfect conditions.
“They had done everything right,” says a representative from GNFAC. “They had reduced their risk as small as you possibly can on this terrain. The problem is, we can’t bring it down to zero.”
From the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center:
“They were an experienced group who all had avalanche training. The victim was a very conservative decision maker in terms of avalanches. The avalanche was a small wind slab that broke up to a foot deep and was at most 20 feet wide. They had not seen any signs of instability and to their best knowledge the couloir appeared to be free of any wind affected or wind deposited snow.”
Our thoughts are with the victim’s family and friends.
I send condolences to the family and friends. Saying “they did everything right” and that ” they had reduced their risk as small as you possibly could on this terrain” is not accurate in my opinion. I’m not saying that they weren’t experienced. But my opinion stands that there was some bad decisions made that day on terrain selection and stability assessments. I saw the party shortly before and after the incident. That day in the advisory there was a general low avalanche danger warning with the only concern being isolated wind slabs near ridge tops. Approaching our line my friend and I experienced strong sustained winds and discussed concern with some decent sized wind slabs we had observed ascending to our line as well as scoping our line before dropping into it, however our line was not exposed to cliffs, but I’m not saying we couldn’t have triggered something larger than we would have expected that could have buried us . Not trying argue any point with anyone, this is only my opinion. But risk assessment in my opinion is a huge part of being a “conservative decision maker in terms of avalanches”.
thank you for sharing. So sorry for your loss.