Survivor says sledder was not breathing, looked like "blue and purple corpse"

Four snowmobilers barely survived an avalanche in the Frisby Ridge area that left two of them trapped under the snow while their friends frantically tried to rescue them late Tuesday afternoon.

One of the trapped sledders had his leg pinned between a snowmobile and a tree, while the other was found not breathing following the avalanche in an area known as Deadman's Creek.

The group called the BC Ambulance Service with their satellite telephone, said Buck Corrigan, a manager at Revelstoke Search and Rescue, but they quickly lost battery power.

"Revelstoke SAR received the call from the RCMP and initiated a team of four on sleds to find and assist, having been given GPS co-ordinates from the party," wrote Corrigan in a report posted to the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides website. 

Search and Rescue crossed paths with the sledders, but were unable to locate them in the dark. Fortunately the sledders were able to make it back to the Frisby Ridge parking lot on their remaining sled.

"All members of the distressed party were well equipped with shovels, probes, emergency gear," wrote Corrigan. "A lucky outcome for this party."

One of the sledders posted to several online message boards about the avalanche and the frantic rescue attempt. He said they started sledding at around 3 p.m. on Nov. 17. They got close to the bottom of Deadman's Creek when they realized there was no safe way out, so they started to head back up.

The poster said the avalanche caught all four members of the party in its path.

The poster, along with a sledder identified as Riley, were buried completely. Two other sledders, identified as Randy and Jeff, were buried up to their waists.

Randy and Jeff activated their avalanche beacons to locate their missing friends. It took them about 15 minutes to locate and dig out Riley's face. They then worked on digging out the fourth member of the group.

"Randy noticed a black spot through the snow (my balaclava) and frantically began digging," wrote the poster. "He uncovered my face and found a blue and purple corpse (literally), he said I was not breathing nor responsive. He continued to uncover my chest and abdomen, yelling [at me]. I apparently blinked very slowly and gasped a tiny breath of air. I do not remember much until about 30 minutes after I was pulled out of the hole."

Jeff and Randy then turned their attention back to Riley, who had his leg pinned between a snowmobile and a tree. After he was freed, the four made their way back to the parking lot on the remaining sled.

According to the poster, Riley was taken to an emergency room in Vernon for surgery.

Corrigan said Revelstoke SAR tried to get back to the site Wednesday to dig out the buried snowmobiles and do a fracture line profile of the avalanche, but were unable to make it due to weather.

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The Youtube video linked to this story was distributed in a press release from the Revelstoke-based Canadian Avalanche Centre in April and depicts a massive avalanche caused by a high-marking snowmobiler in the Valemount area. "The video shows a snowmobiler climbing a steep face in the Monashee Mountains near Valemount, B.C. Taped just two days ago, the snowmobiler climbs past the high marks left by previous riders. Just after the machine reaches the top of its curve, the slope fractures and rider and machine are carried down in a very large avalanche," stated the Canadian Avalanche Centre press release.

“He is an incredibly fortunate rider,” says CAC Operations Manager John Kelly. “You can see the person somehow ends up riding out at the bottom, so we know we’re not watching someone die. But it very easily could have ended that way.” The number of snowmobilers killed in avalanches last season was double the worst season on record. Of the 24 avalanche fatalities last season, 18 were snowmobilers. All but one of the fatal accidents last season were in B.C.

The video does contain some explicit language.

See the Nov. 25 print edition of the Revelstoke Times Review for more on this developing story.

UPDATE

FULL VERSION OF STORY APPEARING IN THE NOVEMBER 25 edition of the Times Review, including interviews with the survivors

Snowmobilers survive avalanche at Frisby Ridge

Kerry Cooper was entering a dreamlike state. Buried over his head by a series of avalanches, his brain was tricking him into thinking he was all right.

“You start to hallucinate, go in and out, and then it just goes to your mind, well, I’ll just go to sleep, it will be OK,” he told the Times Review. “You think in your head at that time it’s going to be okay, but the reality is it’s the worst possible time. You actually want to close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Cooper was anything but OK. Completely covered in snow for more than 10 minutes, he was close to death.

Meanwhile, his friend Riley Tuplin was a metre away, screaming in pain as his leg was caught between a snowmobile and tree stump.

Fortunately for the two of them, their two companions, Jeff Hodgson and Randy Kaup, emerged from the avalanche uncovered and were frantically working to dig them out.

Cooper and Tauplin, both from the Lloydminster, Alberta area, and Hodgson and Kaup, both from Edmonton were out snowmobiling on Frisby Ridge just north of Revelstoke.

The group are all experienced sledders and had been going out on trips together for the past five years, said Cooper.

It was about 3 p.m. and they decided to head down into an area known as Dead Man’s Creek, with the thought of making it to the bottom of the slope and then onwards to the parking lot.

They weren’t entirely sure of their plan, so Kaup went on ahead to scout things out.

“We didn’t feel comfortable with going all the way to the bottom,” said Cooper, so they decided to head back out.

Cooper walked down to help Kaup with his snowmobile. He was on his way back up when Kaup started to head back up the hill.

“I fired up, turned up the hill and took off,” said Kaup. “After just about 30 feet or so it fractured above a ways off so I just rode out to the very top.” The first avalanche didn’t seem too serious, but then a second one stormed down the mountain.

“I took two steps toward the tree and at that point I was buried,” said Cooper.

He still had a hand loose, and was trying to wiggle his way out when a third slide swept over him, burying him completely.

“I couldn’t do anything – blink or move a finger or nothing. You’re just struggling to breath and then you really panic,” Cooper said. “I just thought to myself I had to get the breathing under control and breath as slowly as possible otherwise I’m going to expend everything right away. Then after a while, even with the slow breathing, your lungs start to burn and that gets painful. Then that goes away because you’re asphyxiated and you lack oxygen in the brain.”

Meanwhile, Tuplin, who had been sitting on Cooper’s snowmobile, had been swept down and into a tree. He was buried completely and his leg was pinned between a stump and the sled.

Hodgson and Taup both emerged from the avalanche unscathed. Hodgson was swept down the hill, but wasn’t covered. Taup rode it out and parked his sled out of harm’s way. The two met up and immediately began looking for the others.

They activated their avalanche beacons and turned up two signals – one down below, and one a little higher up. Hodgson went down, Kaup went up.

“I started booking back up hill,” said Kaup. “It was really hard going. It was deep snow up to our chest and a crust had formed on top.”

The beep was coming from 40 metres up, near a tree. He got there, only to find a pile of snow six feet high where the signal was.

“I saw Riley’s two fingers sticking out of the snow about an inch. He was wiggling them right over, behind the tree,” said Kaup. “I started to dig like crazy for his hand and grabbed it so he knew somebody was there. I dug down like crazy, got by his helmet and cleared it out. He was freaking out of course. We yelled at him, “You’re OK. We’ve got you. We’ve got you.”

Kaup worked frantically to dig him out, and saw away the tree stump that was pressuring his leg. By this point Hodgson had determined that no one was down below and had joined in the digging. It was starting to get dark out.

They turned off Tuplin’s beacon but the signal didn’t stop. It turns out, Cooper was only a metre away. By this point more than 10 minutes had passed.

“Lo and behold, we look down and caught this little black thing,” said Kaup. It was Cooper’s balaclava.

“We went to dig around his face, clear out his face,” said Kaup. “He looked dead. I mean, he was blue, there was zero response, his pupils were totally dilated as big as saucers.”

Kaup and Hodgson kept digging, looking for a sign of life. “I saw his eyes blink a little bit,” said Kaup.

They removed snow from around his chest, until Cooper finally took a small breath.

“I tapped on his face, saying ‘Please breathe! Breathe!’” said Kaup.

Seeing that Cooper was alive and breathing, if just barely, Kaup and Hodgson returned their attention to Tuplin, alternately digging and sawing to free their friend’s trapped leg.

“When we found Cooper we were happy,” said Kaup. “We knew we would all make it out alive.”

The group still had to make it out of the area and back to the parking lot. Down to one snowmobile and with the sun setting, they slowly walked and sledded out of the area and back to the parking lot.

Meanwhile, Hodgson contacted Revelstoke Search and Rescue (SAR) on his satellite phone but his battery cut out before he could let them know exactly where they were.

SAR sent a team up, but because of the darkness they didn’t find the distressed party.

When they got to the parking lot, an ambulance was there to greet them and take Tuplin to Queen Victoria Hospital in Revelstoke. He was released that night, but the next day his leg started to swell up and he was taken back to hospital.

The swelling was so bad that was immediately rushed to a hospital in Vernon for emergency surgery to deal with a blood clot.

Cooper said he had a five centimetre by 12 centimetre opening cut on his leg to get the clotting out.

Buck Corrigan, a manager with Revelstoke Search & Rescue, tried to get back to the site to dig out the buried snowmobiles and do a fracture line profile of the avalanche, but was unable to make it to the area due to weather.

He said they were in a dangerous area for avalanches. “They were on the lea side of a huge ridge and the snow is drifting in very deep there,” he said. “It’s typical for early season conditions on lea-loaded slopes to be dangerous.”

Anna Brown, an avalanche forecaster with the Canadian Avalanche Centre said the snowpack is unstable because of the continuous storm systems coming through the area.

“It’s still sitting lightly on the terrain,” she said. “It hasn’t pressed in, it hasn’t had time to bond together, it hasn’t had time to squish in to the terrain and really set up.”

Tuplin was still recuperating in a Vernon hospital as of Saturday afternoon.

The other three were on their way back home, with their snowmobiles still buried in the mountains, when they were reached by phone and told their story.

“I would like to get home,” said Cooper. “It seems like its a dream.”