The most terrifying word any one of us will hear while recreating in the backcountry. A panicked stricken voice shouts in the middle of a sunny day while having lunch.  "Holy fuck! AVALANCHE!!! holy shit, oh my god ....KEEP EYES ON HIM!  FUCK , WHERE IS HE!!??  OKAY GO FUCK MOVE!"

First and foremost i'd like to apologize if this blog post is a bit messy , unorganized and contains profanity. I am using this to put my thoughts down and tell it how it was. Kind of a public diary in hopes that it serves as a reminder to some of you and so we can all learn from the mistakes that were made that day.  This is the account I as recall it and might not be 100% accurate but I will do my best.  I am going to update this is at a later date with some photos and proper statistical information but first I need to vent. I will not proof read this for a few days so it may be a confusing read. 

The slide was triggered just afternoon by a man we had met earlier that day. He took the time to show us the ropes and give us the lay of the land as far as sled skiing goes, which is nice considering people don't usually like to give stashes away .   Harry ( my partner for the day ) J for now (victim ) , his friend ( i can't remember his name ) ,a Toby creek adventures guide and myself were hanging out at location C in the photo. J had taken off and had been riding for a few minutes when I could hear the sound of a highmarking snowmobile. I Looked over and J was making his way up the face and it looked like he had stopped for a split second when i noticed the fracture line above him and then the slab start to peel away from the face. It didn't take long before I lost sight of him, the last i saw him was about 150 meters above spot A.  Once everything stopped  i realized that it was only Harry , the guide and myself. J's partner wasn't with us.  His snowmobile ended up being partially buried in spot B but i can't remember if it was in the initial slide or if it was from the second slide that came down sometime during out rescue. All three of us took off on our sleds to the toe of the debris field,  I yelled out to make sure everyone was in search, (im not sure if it was because some one wasn't in sure or the fact that my cell phone was on( fucking stupid, i always turn it off  but i was taken photos earlier with it , still stupid, i turned it off almost immediately once i got fucked up readings and remembered it was on) but i was getting a multiple burial reading for the first part of the beacon search.  Beep, 36m. Wallowing through the debris field was much harder than i ever thought it would be, open jacket , one glove  and sinking in to my waist every step. beep 24M  we were getting closer i was already getting winded, it was hot and i had not drank much water, i remember thinking " holy fuck  im going so slow" Beep 18M getting closer. The guide was ahead of me now, he was yelling out his readings,"14! .......8!.....5! ...2.6 ....3.5 ......2.6......2.6!!! PROBES NOW."I remember taking a second while Js friend and Harry put their probes together to think.  Fuck 2.6M. Point A.  that's like 7 fucking feet. I don't like to admit this but i lost almost all hope right there and then. That's really deep, I've read enough books and articles to know that 2.6M was a really deep burial. I put my shovel together as the other two probed. They managed to get a probe strike pretty quick at first and they thought it was a rock ( i guess it was his helmet ) then a few more probes and they were sure. Good enough for me , i starting digging. I tried my best to dig " into the slope" as i was taught during my AST but this debris field was almost flat . We had to dig down. we were four digging, had good communication the other two kept saying " were coming J! , hang on ! "   I remember early on looking at the guide and asking him if he had called for rescue on his radio yet, he looked at me for a second then jumped on the radio for RK heli. We were switching out diggers as they got tired and while the diggers dug the other two tried to remove snow to avoid it falling back in . I could feel the snow packing and getting firmer as we dug down.  About a meter in i thought, this is insane , how much further? dug another half meter, i was starting to think...shit ..false probe strike.  Digging like that is the most exhausting thing i have ever experienced . you could go hard for 30 maybe 60 seconds and you started to slow , arms ached , you were sweating and could barely breathe. moral was getting low  and i think everyone thought we had a false probe strike. Thinking back now the more we dug the closer my beacon beeps got, wish i would have heard it then, could have been a good moral booster.  I went for another good shovel full and i hit jacket, it was red  and looked like it could be a sleeve.  " GOT HIM! GOT HIM !!! FIND THE HEAD. CLEAR THE AIRWAY, GOTA CLEAR THE AIR WAY"  I remember seeing the back of his black helmet, it was fucking terrifying to be standing in a 6 foot deep hole and his helmet was just poking out at my feet. We dug his face out , now this is when it hit home and things got really real for me. Up until this point i was just working, i didn;t really think and it didn't feel real. I dug around his face took snow away from his lips with my hands and took a bit some snow out of his mount. He was so cold and his face felt like a rubber, not really human. I dug some more and saw how blue is lips and face were. He wasn't breathing. I remember just taking a second and really looking to see if he was, i was hoping.  I almost broke down here. I knew , he was dead, we failed , were weren't fast enough and now he's dead. I could just imagine how his friend felt.  Just his shoulder and head were sticking out, his goggles packed with snow.  Some one yelled " Keep digging we need to get his chest clear, find his legs! " and i came back to reality and kept working. There was still hope, i believed it . The guide was preparing to resuscitate him , we freed his chest, and dug out one leg. We tried really hard to pull him out ( stupid thinking back ) but there was a lot of hang fire left. The guide got a mask on him and starting giving him some air, after a few seconds he snored. great sign. this guy might make it , we dug out his right right leg that was in an unnatural position but had a hard time finding the left one . we felt his hips and determined where his leg was before we dug it out. At this point Harry and i were asked to head down a bit , signal the heli , watch for hang fire and if anything did go, we could respond. thank god that never happened.  A very long 10 minutes must have gone by before we heard the heli coming up the valley.  It made a pass by the debris field, circled then put down for a second and let out panorama patrol and  an RK guide ( judging by his jacket).  The chopper took off over the ridge and was gone. Im guessing to refuel but i have no idea. 10-15 minutes later it came back, blasted over the ridge in an almost inverted banked turn , circled to the burial site and dropped a back board. The guide/patrolers loaded him up , the heli flew in picked him up and took off. 

That is pretty much all i can put together for now. I will update later on once i have some time to process and reflect.  J's is currently alive and at the Vancouver hospital. from what i understand he is in a coma and has had an MRI with some positive results . I don;t know how much time it took for us to clear the his airway but if i had to guess id say 13-16 minutes but it felt like hours. I wanted to put his down to get it of my chest and to keep account with a fresh memory.