Snowboard Recovered 6 Months After Avalanche

After being lucky enough to escape an Avalanche unscathed, having his lost snowboard found was just the icing on the cake for Brian Goodwin. He was in the backcountry with a group of friends in Stein Valley just east of Pemberton B.C. earlier this winter. One of the snowboarders triggered an avalanche the luckily missed the group but buried their four snowboards and two snowmobiles. After hours of probing and digging all the gear except for Goodwin’s snowboard was recovered. 

Goodwin lost his board but left a note in a cabin near where the group was riding asking anyone who finds the board to contact him. Over the past 6 months, no one had contacted him. Someone had scribbled “She’s swimmin’ now, bro!” onto the note. This lighthearted jab turned out to be true.

“I gave up hope about five months ago,”– Brian Goodwin

At the tail end of the B.C. Day long weekend, Goodwin received an email from Louise Pick. Pick had been hiking with her boyfriend that weekend and noticed the note on the side of a cabin on the way into the hike. The couple reached an unnamed lake 1,900m above sea level when she spotted the snowboard submerged near the edge of the lake. 

“I was like ‘Oh my god, it’s the snowboard!’ I just saw it in the water. We were so stoked on it, you know. Anytime you can help people out it’s awesome,”- Louise Pick

After fishing the board out of the lake and making a few summer turns on nearby snow patches Pick decided that rather than hauling the board out with her she would stash it for Goodwin to find later. She emailed Goodwin the location of the board and recommended he go hike and find it.

“I told him ‘It’s a beautiful place to hike in the summer so I bet you could just hike in there yourself and go get it.'”– Louise Pick

Goodwin is grateful to Pick for finding his board but suspects that it is probably too waterlogged and rusted to repair. Despite this, Goodwin wants to recover the board and buy Pick a beer someday.