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The Darkest White
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Yes, I'm talking about the book, so wrong forum, but with some of the other threads going around right now about guided skiing, I thought it was relevant. If you haven't read this book about the Durrand Glacier avlanche that caught 13 and killed 7, including Craig Kelly, you should, I thought it was excellent. There are plenty of slide zone topics to go around in the book. For me, it mostly came down to a lead guide who was difficult to question and have conversations with- he was the boss and that was that. For those of you who read the book, what did you think?</p>
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I enjoyed the book and thought it was thought provoking. The moment where one of the guests who died was entering the couloir while saying it felt like a bad idea was particularly chilling.
For further reading (listening), Wylie, the tail guide, wrote a book ("Buried"), and has also given a couple of podcast interviews on the accident:
Buried: https://amzn.to/3Fx910N
Avalanche Hour: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000678783541
Sharp End: https://www.thesharpendpodcast.com/episode-74
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^^ I had heard the Avalanche Hour one, but not the Sharp End, which I thought was quite good.
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I have skied a bunch with a guy who was one of the 13 buried, a super quiet guy, I spend a week living/ working with him at a remote job he doesnt say shit and then WOW I see his face on the screen in that movie. It sounded like after being buried for so long buddy had heart issues which would come up when we were touring, so he would just ski thru them and eventualy they stopped. If there ever a question if we should ski something or not he was the first guy to say " you know we don't need to ski this " I see him round still skiing I would say he has come out of the ordeal fine
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“Fine” is a funny way to put it.
I met and briefly skied with the tele guy from SoCal that was killed. Was part of a team of [emoji638] who gave me a free all-day lesson.
A friend of a friend was one of the hero’s from truckee. I haven’t talked to them in a while. I’m not sure “fine” is the term I’d use, but they’re continuing to move forward with the best life they can….
I haven’t read the book.
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well like I said just a really quiet guy who didn't need to talk about it, not injured, the heart issues went away, didnt have to write a book, didnt have to soul search or any of that stuff, just a really quiet guy doing " fine " and so its one data point
he did swear alot almost imperceptively under his breathe at his building projects I suspect he had always swore at his building projects
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PTSD is weird.
Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums
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I thought it was a really good read. It was strange knowing the outcome...waiting for the hammer to drop on them.
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I didn't read the book yet, or listen to the podcasts. I read Eric Blehm's previous book "The Last Season" about backcountry ranger Randy Morgenstern and thought it was good. Regarding the avalanche, it makes me think of something in aviation safety called "Crew Resource Management" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management</a></p>
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A one sentence summary of CRM from wiki: "While retaining a command hierarchy, the concept was intended to foster a less-authoritarian cockpit culture in which co-pilots are encouraged to question captains if they observed them making mistakes." It came about after several airline crashes in which the captain did not listen to or overrode the crew, including the two-747 disaster at Tenerife, where the captain essentially took off rather than wait for clarification.</p>
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Anyway I am neither an avalanche or aviation expert, but I find reading about decision making useful, to think about to understand how to not fuck things up. I only work in mostly non-lethal contexts, but if you ever knew people who don't listen, some of it will sound familiar.</p>
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The two podcasts were very interesting.
At the same time I found an old Powder mag article on the lead guide. Pretty biased and tacky writeup that kinda reads like a marketing copy on the guiding operations but that was all I could find as a credible counterpart to the book and Wylie's ideas.
Wylie seems like a super interesting and wise person and it's hard not to respect or at least to relate to him in terms of the pain he's gone through and how "universal" that can be.
I'm still kinda sceptical about how much he muses about gut feelings and intuitions. Pretty obvious given his experience but in my case relying on that 100% can fuck up your experience on both ways (too severe of a judgement or too lax of a judgement risk-wise)
