I Survived an Avalanche on a Colorado Fourteener

Everything was going according to plan for Trevor Carlson on the north side of Quandary Peak, Colorado, until a group of riders dropped in above Carlson and his group of friends on Sunday, April 21, kicking off an avalanche that buried a member of his party.

As more and more skiers enter the backcountry, the risks of them riding in the same terrain are increasing. In complex terrain in the high alpine, these risks compound and, if not properly mitigated, can lead to disaster.

Carlson hopes that his story will serve as a reminder of how to be aware and considerate of others in the backcountry. If you’re riding in big terrain and see a group below you here is the proper protocol: Stop and give the other party time to completely exit the line. Ride one at a time, keeping your partners in sight at all times. When pitching out a longer line, find islands of safety tucked out of the way of overhead hazard.

Rescue is many hours away in the high alpine—always ski within your ability and carry the equipment and knowledge to self-evacuate. If you start an avalanche that involves another party, always stop to help the rescue efforts.

Outside digital editor Jake Stern spoke to Carlson on April 27. Carlson’s partner who was buried requested not to be named.

I got a text on Saturday from a buddy in Denver asking about skiing the North Couloir on Quandary the next day. He drove up and another one of our ski crew who lives in Breckenridge met us at the trailhead at 7:00 A.M. I drove over from my home in Eagle and spent the night before in my truck.

Over the course of the night and into the morning, I began to see multiple parties roll in. I remember getting out of my truck in the morning and seeing a ton of people there. Our party of four left the trailhead early, knowing we had about 3,000 vertical feet to climb. Quandary is a pretty straightforward skin—you just climb the ridge. It’s very popular.

We had our route planned out on our phones. Earlier, we’d read beta that had suggested that the top of the North Couloir was really wind scoured, and we might not be able to actually ski it from the top. So we had a backup plan to descend the ridge and enter the line from the right.

We made really good time—I think we summited in like two-and-a-half hours. We were cooking. We knew it was crowded, and we wanted to get up there before anyone else did.

We were hanging out at the top, joking about how Pop Tarts have a bunch of nutrients in them, having a good time. The weather was great, but windy. We thought the wind was stripping snow from the couloir. Another group arrived at the summit after us and overheard us talking about skiing the North Couloir. They were like, “Oh, we’re going to do that, too.”

But we were there first, we passed multiple parties, and we definitely beat this crew up. We transitioned quickly and headed down. When we arrived at the top of the couloir, we saw a lot more snow deposited in it than we imagined. Our antennae went up—we thought the line might be a little loaded.

I was the first one to the mouth of it, and I really did not feel like approaching from the skiers right side of it because that entrance would require down-climbing on icy rocks. So I entered from the top, riding the first pitch of it, which was really icy.

Then I skied to an island of safety at the edge of the couloir and let the rest of my crew join me. We broke the line into sections and rode one at a time because we started to notice that the chute had gotten really wind-loaded, and it seemed like there was a real risk of a wind slab avalanche.

My buddy who was caught in the slide rode one more short ladder pitch of it and kind of ducked off to the skier’s right side, thinking he was out of exposure from above. At this point, I’m not exactly sure how far down the couloir we were, but we had done, I think, about a third. That’s when I saw one of the other groups start skiing down. As I continued to look up, I saw two more of them. I could easily see that there was more than enough room for them to stop and wait safely for us to finish the line. But then they started skiing down all at once.

That’s when the third rider triggered a wind slab maybe 50 feet above me. (Editor’s note: All of Carlson’s numbers here are approximate, recalled from memory during a stressful moment.) I remember it almost happened in slow motion. I watched as this wind slab, which had maybe a one-foot crown, rip by me. It propagated instantly, sweeping under the rocks beneath me like a wave. It split the snow down the couloir in two and knocked one of my partners off his skis.

We were all carrying radios tuned to the same channel. I immediately hopped on the radio and shouted “Slide, slide, slide, slide!” I immediately looked for my two other ski partners who were tucked into a safe zone down the couloir from me, and they were fine. 

Looking down to our partner who was caught, I remember seeing his feet fly up into the air and thinking, “It’s actually happening.” I’ve been skiing in the Colorado backcountry for four years now, and I take snowpack analysis very seriously. I’ve had mentors, I read, watch reports, took my classes, and have been able to mitigate risk through snowpack analysis for quite a while. Until this point, I’ve never had to pull my beacon out and put it in search mode.

My ski buddy and I who were still above the debris couldn’t see our friend anymore because the slide flushed him out of view. I didn’t see him riding on top of it while I watched it happen either. My internal alarms are really going off.

We sent one member of my group down immediately to see if he can spot our missing partner in the apron, meanwhile the other two of us begin a slower grid search from above. When we’re about halfway down from the trigger point to the apron we hear our friend pop up on the radio. “I’m alive. I’m alive,” he said.

I radioed back and asked if anyone from the group that triggered the avalanche was caught, too, but as I descended I saw them all very far away, at the exit of the line preparing to leave.

When we got to our friend, he did not have his skis on. He had lost a pole, sunglasses gone, snow everywhere—he was super frazzled. We ran through our first responder checks. I was like, “Hey, touch your fingers, you know, move, wiggle your toes. We need to make sure you don’t have any broken bones that you don’t realize. Can you take a couple deep breaths?”

Once we found his equipment, we checked his skis to make sure all of his gear was working. At the end of the day, he was fine. Sore and shaken, but uninjured.

On the skintrack out, we caught up to the party that triggered the avalanche. I asked the rider who broke the slab, “Do you guys have any idea what you did?

But they blew us off, and I felt that they didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.

I thought, you gotta be kidding me. This could have been awful. Even a rescue situation way out here would have been terrible.

It was crazy. The fact that their entire team wasn’t right by my buddy’s side, actively trying to make sure he was okay—it just floors me. These guys were longtime backcountry skiers, and they wouldn’t admit how wrong it was to cause an avalanche that could have killed all of us.”

You can read Trevor Carlson’s field report at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center’s site.