With storms in the forecast and winter about to hit, big time, we thought it would be interesting to look at one of the scariest avalanches ever caught on film. In 2008, snowboarder Randall Stacy (16 at the time), was riding a hike-to line above Cerro Catedral Resort, a high alpine playground in the Patagonia region of Argentina.
Stacy had hiked some 90 minutes to access the line above the resort, testing the snow and cutting lines with his partner as he went. His partner, who was skiing, went first and all went well. So Stacy dropped in, and as the goofy-footer made a toe-side carve, the entire slope gave away, enveloping him in a sea of moving snow that sent him tumbling over a cliff, all caught on video. He was buried for eight minutes. “The slab hit this big roll,” he said after the incident, “and it pulled me in so that I was completely surrounded by snow. Not even my head was out, and from there I got really disoriented.”
“The magnitude of my injuries was puny compared to what could have happened,” he told Snowboarder magazine in 2008. “I had a fractured patella (kneecap). I also had a chip fracture in my pelvis, a hairline fracture in my femur right on the end near the knee cap. The joint in my pelvis called the sacro-iliac joint is a little funky. But other than that, I just had a few bone bruises and some cuts.”
It looks as though the avalanche buried several people near the lift but, miraculously, there were no reported fatalities in the incident. What did Stacy learn? “If you are going to be in the backcountry,” he said, “have people who know what they are doing around you. The whole time I was with an avalanche guide and he found me using the beacon and probe.”
Be careful out there this winter, and take a course in person or online. A big descent is only great if you live to tell about it so trust your feelings and live to ride another day.
Editor’s Note: Learn to make smart, safe decisions on your quest for untracked powder in the Essential Guide to Backcountry Basics and Avalanche Awareness with splitboard aficionado Nick Russell and avalanche instructor Sam Thackeray.
