I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses.
After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear:
"You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country".
I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing".
Reading this article it was very hard not to angry. Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths.
* 16 people is a huge no-no.
* The fact that someone in the group (a Liftie!) didn't even have a beacon should be a HUGE warning sign.
* Hitting the slope at 11:45 seems wrong to me - the day had warmed by then allowing the snow to consolidate.
* No clear route identification or plan
* The didn't dig a snow pit to assess avalanche conditions on the slope they were about to hit - my personal number 1
* Multiple people dropped in at once - the biggest no-no of all!
* They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!
* Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.
* Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.
* Calling 911 to report a body is a freaking waste of time and could cost others' buried their lives. KEEP SEARCHING AND DIGGING!
I hate to say it: They were asking for it, and a lot of them knew better.
Please, please, please, never go into the back country without training. Even a weekend course will be great. Don't let your friends or those more experienced than you convince you it's not needed - anyone that says that is not worth going with, because you are risking your life with people that don't know what they're talking about.
EDIT: If you want the first-person avalanche experience, watch this video. I go snowboarding here all the time. Turn the sound way up to really feel it. This person was saved by well trained back country ski partners. http://vimeo.com/6581009
Many people, especially those who have acquired substantial skiing proficiency in a setting that is superficially similar to the backcountry (i.e. maintained and patrolled ski areas) do not truly appreciate the risks of backcountry travel in the mountains.
We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.
Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.
For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.
> They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!
Those caught in the avalanche didn't see any signs, 3 locals splintered from the group at the top and did, on a separate route.
> Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.
It's fairly clearly noted that even those in the path stopped in an old-growth bunch of trees, that's usually expected to be safe[0] (in fact, one of the 4 wedged himself in a tree and didn't get carried away)
> Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.
There were multiple people in search mode, and the first 911 call mentioned was 7mn after the avalanche, not "immediately" by a long shot.
[0] of course not as safe — or smart — as not being in the path at all to start with
The overwhelming reaction I had to this was of how bad the group dynamic sounded. I don't really agree with "severe lack of training and practice caused deaths". Everyone involved had some degree of backcountry experience - many of them had a lot. The issue wasn't lack of training and practice, the issue was how many of the skiers ignored their training and didn't listen to what their experience was trying to tell them.
The primary take-aways I found were to pay more attention to the human factor, keep group size down and route/hazard discussions happening, even (especially?) when skiing with pros or people you really respect and don't ski with all the time.
Fairly strongly disagree on hitting the slope at 11:45 and no snow pit being problems though. Totally depends on the day, and I wasn't there, but this thing slid on depth hoar 3 feet down - that's not caused by a little bit of february sun in Washington. As for digging pits, while I think they can be a good tool to get a look at the snowpack, I also think it's easy to rely on them too much. Spatial variability in a snow pack is HUGE, and all a pit does is tell you how the snow is behaving at one little, somewhat random point. Especially if you're a local and ski in the BC all the time, you should have a pretty good sense of what the snow pack is doing without doing any digging at all. In my home range (the Wasatch), I typically use snow pits mostly to test SPECIFIC questions like "how energetic is this known weak layer that I've been watching for days?." Far more useful are small little "hand pits" and pole probes as you go along, feeling the snow pack in a lot of different places to gather more data points. In this particular case, however, everyone already knew it was touchy, a snow pit wouldn't have changed much. The problem was that they didn't plan or ski accordingly.
Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths.
That is not what I got from reading that. Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference. At least that is the impression I got from the description of the injuries.
and a lot of them knew better.
And I think you somewhat agree. Or do you think they knew, but weren't trained well enough?
The flight engineer's apparent hesitation to challenge Veldhuyzen van Zanten further, possibly because Captain Veldhuyzen van Zanten was not only senior in rank, but also one of the most able and experienced pilots working for the airline
In this case, each of them seems to have felt safe because there were so many other experts around.
Also, no amount of training can fully prepare you for disaster. Even if you have been taught exactly what to do, you may not be able to do it in a situation of severe stress. That might explain the 911 calls. It could just be another 'program', that of 'call 911 for help' took over.
The group was composed of well-trained and knowledgeable skiers. I'd disagree, in whole or in part, with points 3,4,5,6,8,9,10, but HN isn't the place to quarterback an accident. Each point above is well-founded, but may not apply in this situation.
I think that the main reason that Mrs. Saugstad is doing so many interviews is to spread the word about avalanche and snow safety education. Snow is a counterintuitive medium. If you're headed into the backcountry, you owe it to your friends and family to take a class and learn. (Snow science is super fun, too.)
Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where - individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to question the group.
And truthfully, this thread is very similar to the discussion when Craig Kelly's group was caught out in Revelstoke (2003). We have better beacons and airbags but not much has changed (and funding for a lot of avalanche forecasters has been cut
I used to not think about slides but one day i was skinning around Kirkwood by myself (there are a few areas like K, Alta and Mammoth, that I used to know like the back of my hand) and the snow was whumphing and i was thinking it was textbook snow. A little crown broke off, maybe 2 inches high, 8 feet wide, and I was shocked at how hard it hit my boots, almost knocked me over
This article bring back memories since I was at Stevens Pass that day and remember all of the commotion. Saying that these experienced skiers lacked training and practice is completely false. Here is an article that was originally written around the time the accident happened: http://espn.go.com/action/freeskiing/story/_/id/7593035/aval...
"All of the people in the group were experienced backcountry skiers and were carrying avalanche rescue gear, Michelson said. They were skiing the line in sections, one by one, in accordance with standard safety protocol."
I cannot agree enough with this. I spend quite a bit of time every year in Whitefish Montana, and avalanche awareness is a big deal there in the winter time.
Back country skiing is akin to skydiving. Significant experience and training is required. From avalanche awareness training, to avalanche rescue training, to tools and devices that a back country team needs to have to safely participate in the back country snow experience.
You've got to be very experienced and educated before you venture out of bounds...
The NYT just kinda blew my mind. A newspaper article just blew my mind. This is, by far, the best multimedia storytelling I think I've ever seen. Kudos to the team involved in putting this together, you've shown me the future of media and the internet.
I was reading some of the other comments here and wondering if anyone else thought the multimedia content upstaged the writing. This is the better than any kind of storytelling I've ever seen. Videos that auto play as you get to them. 3-D maps that rotate, zoom and plot a course as you scroll down. Path markers that draw on the map as the writer describes the scene. Hopefully more authors and artists will embrace this level of detail and integration of multimedia content with their stories.
Is anyone from the NYT here and can you give any insight into how long this project took to complete? Is this a beautiful one off, or is the goal that this format eventually becomes the new norm?
I'm not surprised since Jeremy Ashkenas works there. They've got probably some of the best front-end web developers and they're extremely smart for realizing that those kind of people are what it takes to keep them relevant today.
the NYTimes is a failing operation desperately grabbing at any approach that may bring in readers. this story, with its complexity of mixed media, disrupted the story and made it hard to follow. fortunately, i use tools that strip the text and allow me to read it as one continuous whole. let the story tell the story. quit trying to be hip or 'trending'.
I think this works because the little videos in the breaks actually do a great job of complementing the content of the article (and happen to be pretty).
There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more harm then good for somebody actually reading the interview. They were more distracting than anything.
I have a feeling that we'll see a lot more of this technique in the future. I personally hope that it doesn't just get slapped on for its visual appeal, but rather as a medium to present value-added content (like this NY Times article did).
Completely agree on both counts. As designers and developers it will be difficult to resist the urge to replicate this all over the place purely for the visual impact, but I hope we don't.
The use was so fantastic here precisely because this sort of story cried out for exactly these tools to provide a deeper understanding.
Pitchfork (the music review site) employs this technique for their "Cover Story" features, some are better than others. I personally enjoy the "alive" feel of the stories:
I dont think this works at all. Its heavy, difficult to read, and full of distractions. The fade in animations are unnecessary and the parallax scrolling adds nothing to the story. The multimedia functions more as footnotes or interruptions that route you outside of the narrative.
Its mobile-unfriendly and breaks the UI of NYT.com.
It's great, but I can't help to get flashbacks to the mid '90s multimedia era. If someone would have shown me this as the future cutting edge back then, I probably would have been disappointed.
Agreed. This article, more than anything else I've seen, convinced me that this is the future of news. Newspapers seem ridiculously outdated by comparison.
I've a lot of experience in back-country, including places like Iran where I skied several peaks. The one time I got into trouble (we had to be rescued by helicopter) was a scarily similar situation to this. I was with a large group (12) of some of the most experienced back-country people I've ever met. I was far and away the least experienced. This group included two Everest summitteers and the head of a mountain rescue service. Because everyone was so experienced they all assumed everyone else was taking the right decisions so they could switch off and relax. Group dynamics are everything in this situation - as they are in any sufficiently complex environment. Luckerly, after a cold night in a snow hole, we were rescued but my learnings were:
1) You need to always have a leader
2) The whole group needs to be aware of the plan at all times, you cannot over communicate
3) Listen to the nagging voice of intuition - if something feels wrong check that feeling out
4) Experts are not always on the top of their name, especially when tired or cold
The presentation is impressive. May future articles be so well-presented.
The people killed in Tunnel Creek and around our region on the same day were good friends, parents, and people.
This slide, in particular, has attracted so much attention because those involved are professionals and because the event resonated so strongly within the ski media community.
Missing from a lot of this accident's coverage is how very much life the slide victims had lived. We can honor them by living as well as they did.
I was riding at Stevens the day before this went down. It was deep, backcountry avalanche risk was high. Crappy footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU
Ditto that sentiment. Live passionately, look out for others.
Snowboarding (resort and backcountry) is my preferred diversion from computers and 'real' life, and I was riding at Stevens the day before Tunnel Creek slid. This is a very meaningful presentation of a tragic event, and very real example of the risks involved in getting out in the snow.
If you read enough survival memoirs you start to see elements of these stories common between them. One of those elements is concern over how one will be seen by their peers for expressing caution.
I don't like to speak authoritatively about most subjects, but I feel very strongly about this one thing. Vanity has no place in the back country. Gosh, in a group of 16 people, not all of whom are acquainted, if at least one doesn't think you're a sissy then it's plainly impossible that everyone is well informed of the risks being taken.
As an owner of an Avalanche Safety app mobile shop I'd say its amazing to get some of this innovation in to articles like this.
Getting users to think about the judgement and impact of the choices they make when they are seeking this rush is a very challenging. Breaking the mold to make a possibly more impactful presentation is exactly what Avalanche education needs.
In case it's helpful, here's a screenshot of what this article looks like on an iPhone (Chrome): http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png
It won't let me zoom out or zoom in. The only way to read the article is by dragging back and forth repeatedly.
Technical/debugging note: everything was fine before the top header image fully loaded. I could zoom out and zoom in before that image showed up, so therefore that header image is somehow removing the ability to zoom for iPhone users (and is also causing the 200% zoom-in).
Odd. It looks perfectly fine to me, in both mobile Safari and mobile Chrome. The text is completely visible, with a little padding on either side, and videos all slide nicely into the text column.
Trying to read this story was really frustrating on an iPhone. I had to keep swiping left and right because the zoom was locked to about double the width of my screen.
It's a shame because, from the sound of the other comments, it sounds like a really nice layout on the desktop. It's a shame they destroyed the mobile experience.
On linux, whether it's Chrome or Firefox, none of the videos play. Really great experience but would love to see the videos. When I get home, I'll have to pop open my Mac to get the full experience.
I first read the entire story on the mobile app, not even knowing that it was part of a larger presentation. The writing itself is very compelling, but the format on the full site adds so much.
Tracking the people through the thumbnail images and seeing the different parts of the mountain matched up to the images the story had produced in my head.
It's a testament to the content and the medium that they chose.
Every part of this was precisely, beautifully and expertly planned to have a profound emotional pull to see the story through to the end. It worked. While I was reading, I felt the emotion from the words + the animations + video + audio.
I love the format, design and style. Simply brilliant.
Sigh, Flash crashed on me (Chrome 23, Windows 7 64-bit)...
I bet doing this in HTML5 would be more reliable.
Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the following paragraph:
"To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally."
How saddening. They worked hard to make it HTML5 compliant, but the user experience for some is ruined by this ad crashing everything...
Can we take a moment to note what a terrible piece of journalism this is? It's written like a short story. I read half way though and still don't know who lived, who died, or when it happened.
Impressed by this feature! I think this is a glimpse at how newspapers can become a lot more relevant/adapt to an online medium. Right now most news sites don't nearly take advantage of presenting a story online.
Not to speak ill of the dead but I don't know WTF these people were thinking. I was skiing at Crystal (~80 miles away) the same day. IIRC we had about 14-16" of freshies that day. It was GORGEOUS in bounds, why go out? I had checked the avalanche data for a side project that day and it was as bad as you can get. And they were skiing in a known serious avalanche hazard zone. Just showing off to out of town bigwigs IMHO. Someone died at Alpental (in the backcountry area), one pass over, that day as well when a slide pushed him off of a cliff.
[+] [-] grecy|13 years ago|reply
After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear:
"You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country".
I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing".
Reading this article it was very hard not to angry. Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths.
* 16 people is a huge no-no.
* The fact that someone in the group (a Liftie!) didn't even have a beacon should be a HUGE warning sign.
* Hitting the slope at 11:45 seems wrong to me - the day had warmed by then allowing the snow to consolidate.
* No clear route identification or plan
* The didn't dig a snow pit to assess avalanche conditions on the slope they were about to hit - my personal number 1
* Multiple people dropped in at once - the biggest no-no of all!
* They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!
* Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.
* Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.
* Calling 911 to report a body is a freaking waste of time and could cost others' buried their lives. KEEP SEARCHING AND DIGGING!
I hate to say it: They were asking for it, and a lot of them knew better.
Please, please, please, never go into the back country without training. Even a weekend course will be great. Don't let your friends or those more experienced than you convince you it's not needed - anyone that says that is not worth going with, because you are risking your life with people that don't know what they're talking about.
EDIT: If you want the first-person avalanche experience, watch this video. I go snowboarding here all the time. Turn the sound way up to really feel it. This person was saved by well trained back country ski partners. http://vimeo.com/6581009
[+] [-] eigenvector|13 years ago|reply
We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.
Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.
For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.
[+] [-] masklinn|13 years ago|reply
Those caught in the avalanche didn't see any signs, 3 locals splintered from the group at the top and did, on a separate route.
> Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.
It's fairly clearly noted that even those in the path stopped in an old-growth bunch of trees, that's usually expected to be safe[0] (in fact, one of the 4 wedged himself in a tree and didn't get carried away)
> Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.
There were multiple people in search mode, and the first 911 call mentioned was 7mn after the avalanche, not "immediately" by a long shot.
[0] of course not as safe — or smart — as not being in the path at all to start with
[+] [-] bencpeters|13 years ago|reply
The primary take-aways I found were to pay more attention to the human factor, keep group size down and route/hazard discussions happening, even (especially?) when skiing with pros or people you really respect and don't ski with all the time.
Fairly strongly disagree on hitting the slope at 11:45 and no snow pit being problems though. Totally depends on the day, and I wasn't there, but this thing slid on depth hoar 3 feet down - that's not caused by a little bit of february sun in Washington. As for digging pits, while I think they can be a good tool to get a look at the snowpack, I also think it's easy to rely on them too much. Spatial variability in a snow pack is HUGE, and all a pit does is tell you how the snow is behaving at one little, somewhat random point. Especially if you're a local and ski in the BC all the time, you should have a pretty good sense of what the snow pack is doing without doing any digging at all. In my home range (the Wasatch), I typically use snow pits mostly to test SPECIFIC questions like "how energetic is this known weak layer that I've been watching for days?." Far more useful are small little "hand pits" and pole probes as you go along, feeling the snow pack in a lot of different places to gather more data points. In this particular case, however, everyone already knew it was touchy, a snow pit wouldn't have changed much. The problem was that they didn't plan or ski accordingly.
[+] [-] Someone|13 years ago|reply
That is not what I got from reading that. Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference. At least that is the impression I got from the description of the injuries.
and a lot of them knew better.
And I think you somewhat agree. Or do you think they knew, but weren't trained well enough?
Thinking about how this could happen, I thought of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Proba..., in particular the part where it says
The flight engineer's apparent hesitation to challenge Veldhuyzen van Zanten further, possibly because Captain Veldhuyzen van Zanten was not only senior in rank, but also one of the most able and experienced pilots working for the airline
In this case, each of them seems to have felt safe because there were so many other experts around.
Also, no amount of training can fully prepare you for disaster. Even if you have been taught exactly what to do, you may not be able to do it in a situation of severe stress. That might explain the 911 calls. It could just be another 'program', that of 'call 911 for help' took over.
[+] [-] ISL|13 years ago|reply
I think that the main reason that Mrs. Saugstad is doing so many interviews is to spread the word about avalanche and snow safety education. Snow is a counterintuitive medium. If you're headed into the backcountry, you owe it to your friends and family to take a class and learn. (Snow science is super fun, too.)
[+] [-] gamble|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtani|13 years ago|reply
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/T...
I just wrote about this from 3 days ago, an inbounds slide at Crystal which is about 40 miles away from the Pass, as the crow flies
http://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/154319/inbounds_slid...
And truthfully, this thread is very similar to the discussion when Craig Kelly's group was caught out in Revelstoke (2003). We have better beacons and airbags but not much has changed (and funding for a lot of avalanche forecasters has been cut
http://www.staynehoff.net/craig_kelly_death7.htm
I used to not think about slides but one day i was skinning around Kirkwood by myself (there are a few areas like K, Alta and Mammoth, that I used to know like the back of my hand) and the snow was whumphing and i was thinking it was textbook snow. A little crown broke off, maybe 2 inches high, 8 feet wide, and I was shocked at how hard it hit my boots, almost knocked me over
[+] [-] ydev|13 years ago|reply
"All of the people in the group were experienced backcountry skiers and were carrying avalanche rescue gear, Michelson said. They were skiing the line in sections, one by one, in accordance with standard safety protocol."
[+] [-] blantonl|13 years ago|reply
Back country skiing is akin to skydiving. Significant experience and training is required. From avalanche awareness training, to avalanche rescue training, to tools and devices that a back country team needs to have to safely participate in the back country snow experience.
You've got to be very experienced and educated before you venture out of bounds...
[+] [-] Pinatubo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrwoodruff|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freyfogle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fourstar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MartinCron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snambi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moronic_shit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arscan|13 years ago|reply
There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more harm then good for somebody actually reading the interview. They were more distracting than anything.
I have a feeling that we'll see a lot more of this technique in the future. I personally hope that it doesn't just get slapped on for its visual appeal, but rather as a medium to present value-added content (like this NY Times article did).
[1] http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/
[+] [-] tapp|13 years ago|reply
The use was so fantastic here precisely because this sort of story cried out for exactly these tools to provide a deeper understanding.
[+] [-] sharkweek|13 years ago|reply
http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/
[+] [-] tsunamifury|13 years ago|reply
Its mobile-unfriendly and breaks the UI of NYT.com.
[+] [-] victoro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subpixel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_s|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subsystem|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo1618|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technotony|13 years ago|reply
1) You need to always have a leader
2) The whole group needs to be aware of the plan at all times, you cannot over communicate
3) Listen to the nagging voice of intuition - if something feels wrong check that feeling out
4) Experts are not always on the top of their name, especially when tired or cold
Stay safe this winter people!
[+] [-] ISL|13 years ago|reply
The people killed in Tunnel Creek and around our region on the same day were good friends, parents, and people.
This slide, in particular, has attracted so much attention because those involved are professionals and because the event resonated so strongly within the ski media community.
Missing from a lot of this accident's coverage is how very much life the slide victims had lived. We can honor them by living as well as they did.
Jim Jack, head judge for the Freeride World Tour, skiing with kids on the hometown hill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30
Those of you at startups may find resonance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ
[+] [-] chair6|13 years ago|reply
Ditto that sentiment. Live passionately, look out for others.
[+] [-] chair6|13 years ago|reply
For those of you more interested in the avalanche / snow-science side of things than that this doesn't render properly on your mobile device, check out http://nwac.us. Specifically, here is their initial analysis of the Tunnel Creek incident: http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_20...
[+] [-] yock|13 years ago|reply
I don't like to speak authoritatively about most subjects, but I feel very strongly about this one thing. Vanity has no place in the back country. Gosh, in a group of 16 people, not all of whom are acquainted, if at least one doesn't think you're a sissy then it's plainly impossible that everyone is well informed of the risks being taken.
[+] [-] scottcha|13 years ago|reply
Getting users to think about the judgement and impact of the choices they make when they are seeking this rush is a very challenging. Breaking the mold to make a possibly more impactful presentation is exactly what Avalanche education needs.
[+] [-] sillysaurus|13 years ago|reply
It won't let me zoom out or zoom in. The only way to read the article is by dragging back and forth repeatedly.
Technical/debugging note: everything was fine before the top header image fully loaded. I could zoom out and zoom in before that image showed up, so therefore that header image is somehow removing the ability to zoom for iPhone users (and is also causing the 200% zoom-in).
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alecperkins|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MichaelApproved|13 years ago|reply
It's a shame because, from the sound of the other comments, it sounds like a really nice layout on the desktop. It's a shame they destroyed the mobile experience.
[+] [-] nikkisnow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelApproved|13 years ago|reply
Such a nice design but it's a shame mobile is left out. Something like that is nice to read away from the desktop.
[+] [-] flurpitude|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] infinityetc|13 years ago|reply
Tracking the people through the thumbnail images and seeing the different parts of the mountain matched up to the images the story had produced in my head.
It's a testament to the content and the medium that they chose.
[+] [-] jameszol|13 years ago|reply
Every part of this was precisely, beautifully and expertly planned to have a profound emotional pull to see the story through to the end. It worked. While I was reading, I felt the emotion from the words + the animations + video + audio.
I love the format, design and style. Simply brilliant.
[+] [-] mrb|13 years ago|reply
Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the following paragraph:
"To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally."
How saddening. They worked hard to make it HTML5 compliant, but the user experience for some is ruined by this ad crashing everything...
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinterman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] picklefish|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swizec|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zaheer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grogenaut|13 years ago|reply