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cover of episode Avalanche at Tunnel Creek | ‘Snow Fall’ with Adventure Journalist John Branch | 2

Avalanche at Tunnel Creek | ‘Snow Fall’ with Adventure Journalist John Branch | 2

2022/4/12
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John Branch: 本文作者John Branch讲述了2012年华盛顿州隧道溪发生的雪崩事件。他从最初对新闻报道的漠视,到深入调查,最终创作出获得普利策奖的报道《雪崩:隧道溪的雪崩》。文章探讨了雪崩的成因、预测的复杂性以及极限运动爱好者的心理。他采访了幸存者和遇难者家属,展现了这场悲剧中的人性与情感。他强调,这不仅仅是一场雪崩事故,更是对人性的深刻探讨。 John Branch还详细描述了雪崩发生时的场景,以及幸存者Elise在雪崩中挣扎求生的经历,展现了雪崩的巨大威力和对人的摧残。他分析了导致这次雪崩事故的原因,包括雪崩预警、大型滑雪团队、隐瞒担忧等因素。他指出,即使是经验丰富的滑雪者,也无法完全预料到雪崩的发生。 此外,John Branch还探讨了极限运动爱好者的心理,以及他们对风险的认知和处理方式。他认为,参与极限运动的人并非鲁莽,而是对挑战自我和追求个人满足感。他们与恐惧的关系决定了他们的成功与快乐。 Mike Corey: Mike Corey作为主持人,引导John Branch讲述了雪崩事件的始末,并就雪崩的成因、预测、安全措施、极限运动爱好者的心理等方面与John Branch进行了深入探讨。他表达了对遇难者的哀悼,并对极限运动的风险和挑战进行了反思。

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The episode introduces the story of the avalanche at Tunnel Creek, detailing the events leading up to it and the experiences of the skiers involved.

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Join Wondery Plus to listen to Against the Odds one week early and ad-free in the Wondery app. Download the Wondery app in your Apple or Google Play mobile app store today. From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds.

On our last episode, we told the story of a group of free skiers who gathered for an epic run down the fresh powder of Tunnel Creek, a legendary backcountry route in Washington State's Cascade Mountain Range. But on their descent, a massive avalanche sent snow and rocks churning down the mountain at speeds approaching 70 miles per hour. Of the 16 people who set out for Tunnel Creek that day, three would not make it home.

Joining us today is New York Times sports and adventure journalist John Branch. John's article, Snowfall, The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2013. The story also appears in John's latest book, Side Country, Tales of Death and Life from the Backroads of Sports. John Branch, welcome to Against the Odds. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.

First of all, John, calling Snowfall an article doesn't really do it justice. It's a full-on multimedia experience. As you click through the pages, there's snow flurries across the images. There's interactive diagrams of how avalanches actually form. And the story itself is told in such a gripping way.

So much time must have went into that. And I know for you, you interviewed the survivors as well as the families of those who didn't make it. And I guess the question I have first is, how did you first come across this story? Yeah.

Yeah, actually, that happened in February of 2012. So just about 10 years ago now. And the Times actually wrote a front page story about that avalanche and another one that happened in Washington also on the same day. And it barely registered to me, honestly, for another month or so when a sports editor at the time, Joe Sexton, came to me and said, you remember that story? And I said, vaguely. And he said, I think there's something more there.

You know, the determination was that avalanches are something that, you know, kill anywhere from 20 to up to 40 people a year in the United States. Most of them are one or two at a time. And so they are, you know, small blips on the news wires. You know, maybe there's a death this weekend in Alaska and then maybe there's two in Utah next week. And so we thought there's something here if, you know, dozens of people are dying of avalanches every year. And so let's kind of dig back into this a little bit, a little bit more deeply.

And so since there are so many happening, what was it about this specific one that made you choose to write Snowfall? Yeah. So when I first set out, it wasn't really going to be about that specific one. It was my starting point on reporting about avalanches as more of a broad topic. But I started the reporting with that particular avalanche because, one, it was the deadliest avalanche of that year. Three people were killed.

And two, because there were witnesses. Often what happens, unfortunately, with avalanches is that the avalanche kills the witnesses because people are backcountry skiing, for example, on their own. But this one happened to have witnesses. And so that's where the reporting started was let's talk to people who were there. And the more reporting I did, including on other avalanches, including a lot of avalanche experts from around the world that could kind of help me understand this world.

The more we realized that maybe the best way to tell the big story of avalanches was to really focus in on one particular avalanche, and it became this one.

You mentioned the word backcountry, how a lot of these accidents do happen in the backcountry. The title of your book is Side Country, and I loved that title. I'd love for you to explain what sidecountry is for people who might not know the difference between that and backcountry. Yeah, sidecountry is the area outside of a ski resort, just beyond the boundaries. People who ski in the backcountry tend to hate the word because the word sort of makes it sound like backcountry light.

It gives the maybe the sense that it's safer if you're just, you know, over the ridge from the ski area. How bad can this be? How dangerous can this be?

Help is just right over there if something bad happens, right? And so the notion of side country is sort of fraught in the world of outdoor sports and maybe gives people a false sense of security. And so when it came time to put together a collection of stories, including this story, side country stuck out to me because it's in a weird way, metaphorically, I guess it's kind of where I like to dabble in my sports writing. You know, I don't do a lot of the mainstream sports.

So I'm a little beyond the boundaries, but I'd like to think it's still kind of within reach. So for both sides of this, it made some sense to me. In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder. If you're looking for new ways to ignite your creativity and open your mind to fresh perspectives, then let Audible be your guide. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or any genre you love,

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One of the allures of backcountry or side country is the pow, right? Got to get that fresh pow. I'm a rookie snowboarder and very few times have I found myself on a ski hill where there actually is powder because it gets flattened out by the thousands of other skiers and snowboarders. So there's a whole group of people on this planet who are almost addicted to just carving through this fresh powder.

Can you speak to that? What's the allure? Yeah, there's nothing like it. You know, virgin powder. It's what everybody wants is to make their own tracks, to feel like they're doing something wholly original. You know, you're the first one to sketch on that mountainside. There's something freeing about that. And so it's a siren's call for a lot of people that live in and near the mountains. When there's a lot of snow coming down overnight, you're thinking, boy, what's

It's going to be amazing tomorrow. Let's get out there. In the podcast, we were trying to paint a picture of what it was like there. And when I was pawing through the information and snowfall, the article and everything, I found out there's videos. There's actually videos of that day because at least one other had video cameras rolling. And you can see it's almost like you are floating through a still moment, like a painting, like everything.

And everything's frozen and quiet. And there's this white fog in the air that's kind of hard to explain. But even watching it, I'm getting goosebumps now kind of just thinking about it again. There is something magic there in those moments on that mountain. Yeah, there was very much a snow globe feel on that day. But that's the kind of day that people love.

There had been more than two feet of snow had fallen the night before, and so there were fresh tracks to be made. It was exactly what everybody really, really wants. And you know, in this day and age, it's harder and harder to find places where nobody else is. And if you can find it as accessible as the back gate of a ski area,

all the better. And Tunnel Creek is a place like that, right? Yeah, absolutely. So Stevens Pass ski area, which is east of Seattle, it's kind of a local ski area. The nearest town is Leavenworth, a beautiful little Bavarian village. And Stevens Pass has at the top of what they call Cowboy Mountain. You can take a couple of lifts to get to the top where you can see 360 views through the cascades.

But on the backside of that is outside the boundaries. You skip through a gate, actually, and there's just 3,000 feet, vertical feet of just beautiful meadows that all funnel down into Tunnel Creek. But it's a rare drop of 3,000 feet, just a perfect steepness for people who are pretty high-end skiers and snowboarders.

And then you can get down to the bottom and ride about a quarter mile or so out to the highway. And then you hitchhike a couple miles back to the ski area. So let's lay out the geography a little bit so I can get a bit clearer. You take the ski lift up and then you hike to the other side of the mountain. And that's where you find Tunnel Creek.

And then there was the words of wisdom to stay left. Why was there two ways down? Is that how it worked? Yeah. So I'll even back you up a little bit further. So when you get to the top of the second lift there, that takes you up to the, to the ridge line of cowboy mountain, there's actually a gate that you pass through. Let's say you were leaving the ski area.

It has a little electronic beeper that would beep when you walk through as long as you had a beacon that was turned on. Avalanche beacon. Avalanche beacons. And it basically says – the sign says, you know, you're on your own. You're leaving the ski area. Take all good to measure. You know, it's kind of the skull and crossbone kind of sign. These people that do this a lot know which way –

you know, is easier, is maybe less dangerous, is maybe more fun depending on their skill level. And so on this day, there was a sense that avalanche danger was real, but they knew let's stay to a certain way. And the safest way to go is to go left.

And so three of the 16 people who were there ended up going to the left. They skipped out and said, I don't feel good about this. They went kind of way around. The rest of the party then went down the middle of the meadows because that's the most fun place to go. But it's also the most dangerous. Again, they had enough of an inkling that there was some danger there that when they went down the meadow, they were sure to stop over to the left.

in some trees because the trees give you protection from an avalanche theoretically. It's interesting because there was some awareness that day that this was dangerous, certainly, but not enough to stop them from doing it. Man, you spoke about the angle. I'm assuming the angle because you can zip down it pretty quick, but also I'm assuming the avalanches happen there because of that angle as well. Yeah, there's a lot of physics involved in avalanches and one of them is the steepness of the

Certainly if a mountain is too steep, it doesn't get a lot of snow clinging to it. We've all seen really steep mountaintops that are almost bare rock. If it's too shallow, then the snow will not slide. And so this perfect angle, and off the top of my head, I forget exactly what it is, but it's somewhere in like the 30 or 35 degree range, is the type of angle which is a lot of fun to ride, but also pretty complex.

pretty conducive for avalanches. What other factors create avalanches? It's a fascinating question, and it's actually one that's studied by scientists. And, you know, there's still some mystery to it. You know, obviously you need a lot of snow, but it's not just, you know, last night's snowstorm. In the case of this snowstorm, there had been about two feet of snow. But the key to this avalanche was also what had happened weeks and weeks before that,

And it's the layers of the snow. And if you think of the snowpack each winter as kind of like a geologic sedimentary rock. Like on the bottom of an ocean or a rock where you can see the history of what's happened in the area. Exactly. It's a winter's history. And so what happens sometimes in some seasons is that there may be a very fragile layer deep in the snow from something that happened, say, in December. And then suddenly in March,

You have enough snow that it's piled up on top of this fragile layer. That fragile layer might be like a sheet of glass, basically. And then you put three or four feet of snow on top of it. And maybe that's enough to cause a natural avalanche. If it's not, maybe it takes a skier or a snowmobiler or a snowshoer to walk across it to make it crack. And it will usually crack down to that glass layer.

And the whole thing then just goes. I guess I didn't realize how complicated that will be because every winter there'll be a different combination of snow storms, ice storms, temperature rises, temperature drops. There'll be a mixed layer of puffy snow, ice, frost, all these different things that then on any given day based on some trigger like a person or a snowshoer or a deer or a tree fall or just too much sun or wind.

It would be so you can't accurately predict these things really at all. You can give general ideas. In fact, the day of this, this one, the avalanche danger was high. It was, I think, four out of five for slopes facing a certain direction to your point because of the, you know, which ones get sun, which one maybe get wind depending on that day. So when you're looking at an avalanche forecast, if you and I were to go skiing tomorrow morning, we would look at an avalanche forecast and I might say, hey, that slopes over 5000 feet facing southeast. There's a pretty high danger.

But under 5,000 feet, it's less danger. If it's facing north, it's less danger. So you're trying to put all these things into play. And so when you and I go out skiing, we're thinking, how high are we? Which way is this going? Is the wind blowing now? And then also you're trying to use your natural intuition to be like, is this just...

doesn't feel right. And a lot of people who explore the outdoors will tell you, you know, before an avalanche, there's just a weird kind of spooky sense of like, this just doesn't feel like we should be here. Spidey sense. A spidey sense. But it sounds like just as much of an art as it is a science, basically, to be able to predict these things. Absolutely. I mean, there are something like 20 regional avalanche forecasting centers.

Around the West, most of them are run by the Forest Service. And to give you an idea, like Stevens Pass had, I believe, like 37 weather monitoring stations in that area. So on top of these mountains, you know, on these hills, you see the little weather stations up on the towers. Those are feeding all sorts of information about temperatures and humidity and precipitation and wind.

And they basically take all this information and say, you know what, tomorrow looks like a really bad day to be in the backcountry. When researching the story, did you go up to Stevens Pass in Washington State? I did. I went there in the spring. And so I hiked up there one day. And to give you an idea, I hiked up there and it was so wet and so steep, I was a soaked mess. And I was trying to figure out where this avalanche had come out because I wanted to be able to describe it and be able to get a sense of the terrain.

And I came across this huge mound of snow. You know, it was probably six or eight feet high. And I climbed up on it.

And it was filled with rocks and logs and branches. And it smelled like a Christmas tree lot. And I thought, oh, my God, this is where it happened. I looked up and there's like a big meadow and a ravine up there. And it really gave me a sense of it's not just snow. I mean, this thing was just filled with debris and it was just locked. So the next day I went up there with Tim Carlson, who was one of the survivors of this avalanche.

And I said, yeah, I was up there yesterday. And would you mind coming back there with me? You kind of show me the landscape so you can help explain what happened. And so he and I went up there and we got to that mound. I'm like, yeah, here it is. He goes, no, this isn't it. That was a different one.

with ours was farther on this way and a little bit higher up in the mountain. So my point is that it's not just one avalanche, that avalanches do happen. But my walk away from that day was really like, this is not just a big pile of snow. I mean, I saw major boulders and huge logs and things that tells me these are powerful forces of nature. And to think of a human inside that was really frightening and really opened my eyes.

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Head over to Symbiotica.com and use code ODDS for 20% off and free shipping on your subscription order. I think for people who don't understand these extreme sports or the extreme athletes that do things like base jumping or mountain climbing or skiing, they call these people naive when these disasters happen. But how aware was this group of the risks going into this run?

Well, they knew what the forecast was that day. I mean, these people that were involved in this particular avalanche were all very experienced backcountry skiers. And they knew what the dangers were. I think they felt comfortable with the equipment that they had. They certainly knew enough to duck into the trees where they felt it would be safer and avoid certain ravines and certain pitches of the slope.

but you don't expect it. I mean, it's maybe like a race car driver or something that you do everything perfectly, but then all it takes is one thing to go weird and your fate is kind of left up to the gods of nature, I guess.

Have you heard of the concept of summit fever? Absolutely. Which is, just to clarify for our audience, when we tell some of these survival stories, we hear this often where there's a group of people, usually a bit larger than normal, and everyone has this goal and there's a small window and maybe people...

things start a little late or there's a couple little telltale signs in the beginning, but people want to get up there. They don't want to spoil the fun. They don't want to be the party pooper. And ultimately, sometimes that does end up in these circumstances. So besides the fact that there was a little bit of warning about avalanches, was there any other factors you think that contributed to the disaster? I mean, to step back a little bit, there were a lot of

pretty powerful industry skiers in Stevens Pass that weekend. There were a couple of meet and greets that brought these people to Stevens Pass that weekend. And so Chris Rudolph, who is the marketing director at Stevens Pass,

I said, hey, there's a kind of a cool sort of semi-secret area of our ski area, Tunnel Creek, that I'd love to show you guys. It's a ton of fun. It's where we go. You guys would love it. And so he was telling people in little groups, you know, hey, maybe on Sunday we can get together and go do this. And that's exciting to hear that if you're a pro. And that's exciting to hear. If you're a pro, you're like, oh, my gosh, we're going to go someplace cool away from everybody else. It could be Fresh Pow. Yeah.

Most of the people in that group, they all knew somebody in that group, but nobody knew everybody in that group. So when they convened on Sunday morning at the base of the ski area, they kind of looked around and said, these are some serious hitters here. Like, I think that might be so-and-so, and that might be so-and-so. But they didn't realize they were all part of the group until Chris Rudolph came out of the door and said, okay, I'm out of the meeting. Let's go. Let's do it. And suddenly 16 people were moving up a mountain together. And these guys and women all knew –

16 is a big group and we know the avalanche forecast is not great, but let's go check it out. And so they took up the two lifts, went out that back gate, got to the top, said, wow, there's a lot of deep pow here. This is exciting. Feels a little sketchy. We should be really careful. Let's get into the trees. But part of what happened and the survivors admitted this later is that whatever doubts they had in the back of their minds, they kept quiet.

partly because they didn't want to be the one that squashed the fun. I think we've all sort of been there. And they looked around at the high level of talent and experience around them and thought, well, if so-and-so is here and doesn't have a problem with it, it must be okay. And so they kept their doubts quiet and kind of went with it, much to their regret.

And the story, you know, doesn't lay blame on anybody, but it was really the fifth or sixth person who went down this meadow where the avalanche cracked. Now, would it have cracked if somebody would have gone a few feet one way or the other? We'll never know. Would it have cracked on the next party, say, an hour later, had this group only been three or four people? You never know what it is that's that breaking point or an avalanche. But the number of people that were going across it was certainly going to put some stress on that snowpack.

And these people, you talked about the avalanche beacons that you have to check in before you cross to the other side of the mountain. What other safety equipment or precautions do you take when you think you may, but hopefully not, encounter an avalanche? Yeah, so it's interesting because even those beacons weren't required. It beeped when you went out, but there was nobody monitoring that. But generally…

If you're going into the backcountry, into avalanche territory, you will be carrying a beacon, which can work both ways. So what happens is that you have a beacon that will give off a signal if you get buried. Once somebody gets buried, you can switch yours to basically do the reverse and now look for that signal.

So people will carry beacons, they will carry poles that you use and shovels that you can use to poke to try to prod to find where somebody might be buried once you get a signal from your beacon and a shovel to help them get out. And one of the people in this avalanche have what are called airbags and they're basically almost like a car airbag system where if you get in an avalanche you can pull it these basically wings pop up filled with air instantly

With the idea that they might help you stay up at the top. Evidence of that is that they're probably better than nothing, but there's certainly no guarantee that you're going to stay up at the top, up at the surface and have a chance for survival. So Elise, Chris and Rob and Johnny were below the avalanche when it started.

Correct. When you spoke to Elise about what it was like being caught in what was much more than snow, what was that like? Yeah. So Elise was one of the first ones to go down the first pitch of this meadow. And so she and others had kind of ducked into the tree thinking it was a little bit safer to be in the trees just in case something happened. And sure enough, a few minutes later, a huge white cloud just roared right at him. And Chris Rudolph, who was standing next to her, screamed.

And Avalanche, or Elise, unfortunately, probably his last words. The Avalanche then came through and Rob Castillo, who was nearby them, had positioned himself purposely between sort of two trees, almost like a stockade, where he thought, if something comes through here, I'm going to hang on to these two trees and hope that these two trees hold.

Elise then gets tumbled by this avalanche. She described it as being inside a washing machine where you're just tumbled and completely out of control of where you're going, what you're doing. You're upside down. You're very quickly losing all sense of direction. What's up? What's down? You just feel like you're tumbling. My thought is maybe it's something like being in a big wave at the ocean where you kind of get caught and you just get sort of

churned at least for a minute. And you said that the wave doesn't recede, it freezes to concrete. Yeah, the wave does not recede, it freezes to concrete. So if you can imagine going through that kind of wave sensation for say 60 seconds, and then knowing that the wave's not going anywhere, that when the wave stops, you're actually going to be frozen underneath the water. That's what it's like to be in an avalanche. And so at least tumble down, churned,

She had the airbags and those went off. So she knew she had these little wings and kind of hoped that they were going to help her.

And she got funneled down through that ravine and then spit out. And you can feel the speed of these things. You know, the people who go through these can tell you. I remember slowing it down. When it slowed down, then I remember it speeding up. And in my mind, it's almost like a roller coaster where you're kind of going up and down over the little hill. You can sort of feel it kind of yanking you. And then all of a sudden, slowing down and yanking you again. And in the case of Elise, she did what a lot of people do. And that is try to put your hands in front of your face. Mm-hmm.

Because if you are stuck under the ice, then maybe you can create like this mask, this little air pocket where at least you could have some air then right around your face where you can breathe for however long until somebody hopefully comes and rescues you. Without that, maybe your mouth fills up with snow and you suffocate right away.

When she came to a stop then, her face was right at the surface of the snow, looking up, head downhill, one ski off, the nose ring was torn out of her nose, and her hands were barely sticking out of the snow. And she could use her fingertips. She couldn't move her arms, couldn't move anything besides her fingertips. And she could almost like windshield wipers wipe the snow away from her mouth and her eyes. And she could see the blue sky and realized,

I'm alive and I'm in a better position than I probably have any right to be. Strangely enough, it was these mittens that she had on a string. Like I always think of like little kids with their mittens on a string, but her mittens were on a string and they were pink. And so they could see they spotted her not by the beacon necessarily, but by her pink mittens sitting on the snow.

As a testament to the chaos and confusion, I once heard or read that if you are at the bottom of one of these things, you really can't tell which way is up or down. And you have to spit and see which way the gravity takes your spit to know which way to go. And that has stuck with me for the rest of my life, that terror. When these things are in motion, it's almost like lava, high speed. You're just flowing with it and it's just moving downhill. But the second it stops, it turns to concrete. And so you're really trying to play this weird, horrific –

game of musical chairs where you're feeling this whole momentum slow and you're thinking, okay, at the moment it comes to a stop, I need to be in this position if I can.

Because once it stops, I can't move. And you're literally unable to move generally, you know, an ankle. You're locked in there. You know, you're like Han Solo. He has an old movie reference. You're stuck. Han Solo frozen in carbonite? What was he frozen in? Something like that, yeah. And besides the game, you said game because it's like a pinball machine. You're the ball going down the board and there's like trees and rocks, which are the plungers and the pins and stuff.

It's a matter of luck, I would imagine. And you bring up another point is that a lot of the deaths in avalanche are not just from suffocation. It's from all the bodily injuries that you deal with on the way down. You know, if you run into rocks and trees, things like that.

So Elise was lucky to have her face quite close to the surface. Rob Castillo tucked behind some trees, but Chris Rudolph and Johnny Brennan and Jim Jack weren't so fortunate. And in Snowfall, it really painted the picture that these guys were really loved by the community.

When you were interviewing people who were there, what did they have to say about these guys? Yeah, I'm glad you say that because people have asked me and I always tell people or I correct them when they say it's a story about an avalanche. But I say, no, it's a story about people in an avalanche. And so I'd like to think that behind this tragedy is a story of humanity and real people.

These are three very different characters. Chris Rudolph was the marketing director at Stevens Pass. I believe he was 30. Just a ball of energy, a marketing dynamo. Loved showing people that world. The story describes how when somebody was coming to Leavenworth,

to come up for that weekend. He went down to the rental car and put a couple of PBRs and Pabst Blue Ribbons into the cup holders of his car so he could drink them on the way. He's like, you know, he's thinking of everything to make people happy. And so people like to hang around him. I still have a sticker here in my desk that says Stevens Pass, but it's based on the logo of Pabst Blue Ribbon because that was kind of the mindset, you know, the outdoors mindset. PBR is kind of like the beer of the outdoors. Jim Jack is

was, you know, I believe I called him the Peter Pan of that world. He was just one of these guys. It was a ton of fun. He dressed up at Halloween as different things based off his name. I'm Jack in the box. I'm Jack Frost. I'm whatever. It was always some sort of play off his name. Everybody called him Jim Jack. Nobody has called him Jim. He was Jim Jack, you know, like one word.

He was a judge in the free ski world. So he knew this world and some of these competitors who do this kind of stuff for a living, jumping, going down just crazy terrain and big jumps and big snow.

He was just like this lovable guy that everybody knew. Everybody had a connection and everybody thought he was like their best friend. And Johnny Brennan was a family man. He was a guy who grew up skiing, you know, raised, I believe, outside of in the suburbs of Seattle, had lived in Colorado where he met his wife, his future wife. They moved back to Leavenworth and had two little girls. And it's interesting because when people ask me about the, like the interview process and the recording process of that story,

Johnny Brennan really strikes me hard because Lori Brennan, his wife, as I was interviewing her a couple of times, I looked across at her and just thought, this is my wife if something happens to me because our kids are about the same age. You know, I probably had more in common with him than I did with the others. But they were just well-known and loved in that Stevens Pass and Leavenworth community.

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And when I read that, I thought about a lot of things because I'm a bit of an adventurer myself. I travel around. I try to make little movies and YouTube videos of different things. And there is definitely a trend in extreme sports to fly the squirrel suit through the stone arch. You know, it's bigger, bigger, bigger.

And I wonder whether it's because of the gram, whether because now we have GoPros, we want to show it off, but people can make their careers on these, on these stunts that they do. And I always ask myself, why do we do that? Is it because there's an explorer spirit and in human nature where we always want to be the first to do something to carve fresh pow or see something new or, and I'd love to hear what you, you think about that. You've spoken to so many talented people who do all of these extreme fringe sports. Why do you think we do these things?

I wish I knew. It keeps me coming back to a lot of these adventure stories. You know, I do think there are misconceptions out there in the general public that people are doing this because they want to become famous or something. They want that YouTube moment or that Instagram moment. Maybe there's some of that allure. You know, you mentioned Summit Fever. There's also Kodak Courage where people do things when they know a camera is rolling that they wouldn't do otherwise. Kodak Courage. I haven't heard that. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's why people will jump off the apartment building roof into the pool, you know, college kids, because people are watching and the cameras are rolling. Guilty. You're going to do it. Guilty. Yeah. So I don't know how much of that is this. But what I tell people that maybe misconstrue the outdoors world generally is that how many people in the outdoors world are really becoming rich and famous? I mean, it's...

That's a weird motivation if that's really a primary motivation. Maybe it is for a few, but I don't think it is for very many. I think this is very much an individual choice. It's people who see...

a challenge and want to take it for their own personal reasons, not because they're looking to get rich or famous, because it's something that's in front of them. And they say, I want to see, I want to feel the, the elation when I pull this off, I want to see if I can do this. And I am an expert enough to know what I can do. I'm not just somebody who's, you know, flinging myself out of a plane who's never done this before, or let's say base jumping. These people have gone through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jumps.

before they do this next thing. And so to them, it's very incremental. I think for readers or for viewers who then are left to watch this or read about it, they're thinking, why would you go do such a stupid thing? It's like, no, this is just the next step of what I always do.

There's a famous quote that's like, everything you need is on the other side of fear. And I think what people get wrong with extreme sports and adventure is that maybe they think people are reckless. Maybe they think that they're just trying to test themselves. But at the end of the day, I think a lesson, when you start doing things that make you afraid, you start to realize that fear is a very powerful force that controls your life. And a human's relationship with fear defines their success and happiness.

And that's a very fine dance that you have to know. And sometimes, yes, with usually bad luck.

you can get yourself into trouble. But I don't think it's, I don't think you're asking for it. I think if you do choose to take a risk, sometimes the risk does not go in your favor, but also sitting on your couch your entire life is a risk too, right? Because heart disease and things will find you there as well, right? So. Right. And, you know, it's interesting. We, at the New York Times, just before the Winter Olympics here, we did a pretty full scale project on fear and how these Winter Olympians who do these, you know, potentially dangerous things like the half pipe or slope style or ski jumping or, um,

luge and bobsled. Things that maybe you and I or most quote-unquote reasonable people would never think about doing. They must be fearless. And we sat down with 40 Olympians in these sports to ask them about their relationship to fear. And everything

every one of them said no what i do scares me yeah and that's why i like it but no we're not fearless we're not wired differently than anybody else it's just how we cope with the fear and part of what makes us human and what makes us feel good about ourselves at the end of the day is that i think i did a pretty good job dealing with a feared day but to hear somebody like a sean white in a half pipe say after all these gold medals and after this huge career say it scares me to death

Sometimes when I'm trying a new trick in there, my heart is going a million miles an hour. I feel like I'm going to throw up ski racers saying I throw up in the start house all the time because I know one wreck could be the end.

I mean, they're real emotion. And some of us are like, I don't want to be part of that. And some people are like, no, I kind of like that feeling. And I want to see if I can challenge myself to it. Actually, I saw an interview with Jeb Corliss, who is a famous base jumper. And he said the same thing. The interviewer was like, oh, you must not feel fear at all. And he took offense. He's like, I'm scared every freaking time I jump. What are you talking about? I've just learned to do it anyway. But that concept defies.

defines your success and happiness in life. Because a lot of us succumb to fear, and I think it makes us unhappy. Yeah, I think there's something to it. We all have different relationships with this notion of fear, and these people just do something that maybe a lot of people can't quite understand, but it doesn't seem weird to them. And there's something so human about that. None of these people ever strike me as superhuman. They're actually very relatable. So going back to the mountain for a second, when you were interviewing the survivors and

The families. What stuck with you the most? I think it was just how human this was and how how much we tend to look at these kinds of disasters, whether it's an avalanche or anything else, as a news story, as a three paragraph item or as a blurb on the local news.

And you really realize just how human these people are and how many lives they touched. And if I can give you a quick anecdote that really struck me that day that I went up there with Tim Carlson to look at where the avalanche had spit out. And he was one of the survivors. And he was one of the survivors. So he and I are hiking up through this really tough terrain. And then once we got through the meadow past where the debris field had been and where the bodies had been, he and I kept hiking up into the ravine.

And at that point, the ravine, it was late spring and there's a lot of runoff. But the ravine also had a strip of snow and ice down it that hadn't quite melted. And as we were hiking up there and trying to hang on to trees and stuff, it was so muddy and so steep, trying to get up this really steep funnel. He looked down and saw what looked like a ski down there on the on the bed of the ravine.

And he climbed down there and he sort of soldiered on his hands and knees on his belly to get out there. Cause he's afraid he might fall through the ice and grab the ski and then pull it back to, to drier land and realized it was Johnny Brennan ski. Oh my God. And he, he melted. He just broke down into sobs. And it was at that moment that I said,

This isn't a story about an avalanche. This is a story about these people. We need to pay homage to that. What did they what did the people you interview say about the rescue efforts that happened that day? It's interesting because the story that I wrote was really trying to stay in the moment, not Monday morning quarterbacking this and their decisions.

But if you can imagine you're standing there and the snow has fallen away from you and just disappeared down to these trees and the gullies, and you're not sure who or what got caught up in it.

You're thinking, let's turn on our beacons so we can hear if somebody's stuck nearby. But their big fear as they went down this ravine now that has now been scrubbed of all this fresh snow. Now it's just like a bobsled track because all the fresh snow is gone. It just basically scrubbed it was going past their friends.

Like, do we rush to the bottom and just assume that they all got washed all the way to the bottom? But what if we get on the bottom and find out later that they were actually up top and needed our help? And so there was a lot of, oh, my God, where do we go? How much time do we have to get to the bottom? Do we stop and really look here or should we just rush? Should we do what? And they were all just trying to do whatever they could without knowing any facts.

And I'm sure this is the case. It's only natural that there's probably some regret. Like, what could I have done differently? Knowing that now that all three of them were down at the bottom, should I have just raced to the bottom? I wish I would have. But how was I to know? Yeah. But that what if feeling, it's a dangerous one, you know? Absolutely. And I think it's true of anybody who's ever been through some sort of traumatic incident. You start reliving this in your mind going, did I do the right thing? Could I have done more? Yeah.

I'm sure some of that's survivor's guilt. You could get into psychology of these kinds of things. They did the best they could. Just in my own life, in the past two years, I had one friend die base jumping and another one die scuba diving. Not on trips I was on, but just friends of mine. And it's a different feeling than if someone dies in a car crash or of cancer.

Do you think there's a special kind of grief that you feel when people pass away doing these things that some consider dangerous? I think outsiders see it that way, maybe more than insiders. You know, you hear people on the outside say, well, he was doing something he loved. And that from people that I know who do things that I don't do, like backcountry skiing or base jumping, that's kind of a slap. Like, does that make us feel better? You know, that doesn't bring them back. No. So I think for insiders, yeah,

I think it's probably more regret. What could I have done differently? You know, was, was I responsible for this and start reliving things, you know, that happened that day or that something I said, some, some small thing, something I said, or why was I not there? Why did I, you know, why did I back out or not show up that morning when we were going surfing or whatever? Maybe I could have done something had I been there. Yeah. I think it's a much more personal regret and it's certainly not like a finger pointing thing. It's just like,

maybe circumstances would have been different. Maybe just my presence there would have mixed something up enough that would have changed what happened.

A few of these survivors of the avalanche have gone on to some other things. For example, Elise has gone to spread awareness about avalanche safety. And in the last 10 years, I guess I'm asking you, what's changed? I think it's been more of a cultural change than anything else. You know, I think people are still carrying the same kinds of gear. Ski areas are still opening up their back gates. But I do think people now in the backcountry, especially skiers and snowboarders,

are more likely than not to have gone through avalanche safety training. They're more likely than not to be carrying beacons and poles and shovels. There's an awareness that has changed. You know, if you look at the numbers of people who have died in avalanches, I mean, it's so hit or miss from year to year. I was just looking today. So far this year, only 12 people, which is a low number historically, have died in the United States in avalanches. Last year, it was...

That has more to do with snowpack, I think, and just sort of the freakness of storms out in the West that have created unstable snow early in the season than anything else. So it's really hard to kind of know what's changed, but I do think there definitely is a change in the culture. You know, the number of people who are going into the backcountry is rising. The number that's, you know, with a small sample size have risen the last 10 or 15 years in terms of fatalities.

Where those things actually meet and coordinate, it's really hard to know. And getting back to the idea of side country, do you think that these ski resorts have a responsibility to take care of the people or the areas? When an accident happens, are they liable? What do you think the ethics and morals are there? This is a tricky one. You know, ski areas certainly see some marketing possibilities here because ski areas, for the most part in North America, are...

areas that happen to be in the middle of public land. You know, there might be in the middle of Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service more times than not. And so there's public land around them. And so if you can go to the ski area and, hey, by the way, if you want to slip out our gate, there is a huge area of really fun terrain back there.

And all you have to do is buy a Lyft ticket. Not recommending it, but... We're not recommending it, but just so you know, it's right over there. And so there's an allure to that. And so do they have a responsibility then? You know, is there responsibility no more than putting up a gate with a little beacon monitor and a sign with a skull and crossbones saying you're on your own? It is interesting, for example, in the case of this avalanche, the ski patrol from Stevens Pass responded. Theoretically, I guess they could say, hey, not our problem. It's outside of our jurisdiction.

our boundary. So there's this kind of strange, unspoken, unwritten, we'll try to take care of you when it's appropriate. If we think it's too far away, then we're gonna have to call search and rescue from somewhere else, you know, sheriff's department or whatever, who's responsible, I think people would like to think we're going to do whatever we can to help you. But does that mean there's some sort of liability? The fact that we're claiming that we're going to send our own ski patrol? Does that mean we're liable for what happened? It's tricky, tricky stuff, tricky stuff.

So last question, how has your life changed after you won the Pulitzer for Snowfall? I would like to say it hasn't. I'm very proud of the work of Snowfall. I'm proud of the collaboration with all the people who helped with all the digital wizardry of it. And I'm mostly proud that I feel like

We told an honest, raw story. And these families hopefully feel glad that they were, you know, open to it and hopefully feel like maybe in some way others have learned from it in a good way. John Branch, thanks so much for joining us on Against the Odds. That was a great chat. Thank you, Mike.

This is the final episode of our series Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. If you'd like to learn more about this event, we highly recommend Side Country, Tales of Death and Life from the Backroads of Sports by John Branch. I'm your host, Mike Corey. This episode was produced by Peter Arcuni. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our series producers are Matt Almos and Emily Frost. Our senior producer is Andy Herman.

Our executive producers are Stephanie Jens and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

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