Throughout much of her career, Sylvia Forest often found herself hanging from a rope in the blue deep of a glacial crevasse. A compact and agile 5’2”, Forest was always the one to descend into an otherworldly fracture to recover whoever had become lost, even if she was busy overseeing the scene from her post as manager of the mountain rescue program in Jasper National Park. When she moved to Rogers Pass in 2005, she would trade crevasses for avalanches.
Illusions of Safety: After a friend’s avalanche death, a lesson in intuition
In 2014 Kim Vinet, then a budding pro skier and tail ski guide, headed out on a trip at British Columbia’s Fairy Meadows Hut. On day six, the unthinkable happened when an avalanche killed a friend and member of her group. This is Kim’s story of intuition, trauma and finding her way back into the mountains when the illusion of safety has been shattered. Here is what she experienced in her own words.
