How a spring day on Mt. Washington proves sometimes danger comes from above, not below

Conway, New Hampshire-based avalanche instructor David Lottmann, 41, is no stranger to the changeable nature of weather and snow conditions on his region’s tallest peak. Mt. Washington (6,288 ft.) is home to some of the highest windspeeds ever recorded on Earth, and in winter that can create serious windslab avalanche danger. Lottmann, aware of these risks, cautiously ventured out last April to ski a fresh few inches that had fallen onto a hard, frozen surface. The possibility of triggering pockets of windslab was on his mind as he hit the skintrack, but he didn’t account for the rare possibility of a remote trigger. Here’s his account of what happened that day.

My friends Ben, Benny and I met at the Ammonoosuc Ravine trailhead at 8 a.m. on April 11^th this past spring. We’d prepared with mileage and time estimates and slopes to avoid. There were about two to three inches of fresh powder on top of melt freeze from a previous thaw.

We got to Lakes of the Clouds in about two hours and 15 minutes. It was pretty windy but bluebird, so we stopped, chatted and decided to head to the summit of Monroe. The wind was strong and shifted to the northwest with a good windchill, so we ended up getting 20 or 30 feet from the summit when we decided it wasn’t worth getting blasted. We thought we’d get a few turns in but keep our elevation high and go toward Mt. Franklin.

As we started to ascend I had a feeling that we might have rushed a decision; the Franklin gully looked loaded. It was an aspect of concern based on what was in the bulletin. We wanted to do something new, but I wasn’t comfortable, so we talked about it and decided to scale back. We transitioned again and skinned back toward the far north side of that same drainage.

I was the first to drop in, and I took a few really good turns before it got super firm. The climb back out didn’t seem worth the rest of the run, so I suggested we cut our losses and head over to Oakes Gulf. Benny was first to drop, and when I connected with him he said he’d just seen a sizeable skier-triggered avalanche come off of the northern side of Oakes Gulf down the primary Dry River drainage.

Below us we saw a 200-foot shot that led to a tight tree gully, which we guessed was between 35 and 40 degrees. We considered skiing it, but first Ben put in a conservative ski cut at the top, which resulted in a small slab release. Having flushed the chute, Ben and Benny discussed dropping it while I decided I was happier with a lower angle line, so I moved to a small ridge for recon. I looked above me and saw steep terrain and a little cliff band that looked loaded, but I wasn’t going up there so I wasn’t super concerned. The slope in front of me looked to be 15 degrees. Those would be my final turns of the day, so I decided to drop in. I was about 15 feet into the run when I looked up and saw that the whole slope above me had failed.

I didn’t think I could make a turn and get back out based on how much snow was coming down, so I made for a tree, reached for my mic and called, “Avalanche!” and then wrapped my arm around the tree. A second later, the first wave hit. I thought I was going to be buried, but it stopped, and I had debris up to my waist.

My partners already had eyes on me, so they checked for overhead hazard and skied over. At first it didn’t click that I’d triggered the avalanche. There was no noticeable whoomph or collapse. I was at least 50 feet away from the bottom of the slab when it failed, and it didn’t register that I was the one who had been the trigger.

On the East Coast, we don’t often deal with a lot of the avalanche problems that are common for remote triggering. We deal with windslab, but we’re most often on top of the slab that fails. So that was a big take-home point: windslabs can be remotely triggered. We were doing well managing the terrain all day, skiing short pitches, making decisions together and tempering ambitions in light of new info. At the end of the day Ben summed it up, “Spend enough time in avalanche terrain; you are going to find avalanches.”