Avalanches in Vermont are considered as uncommon as getting the measles. But in March 2018, Vermont residents Aaron Rice, 28, who notably climbed and skied 2.5-million vertical feet in 2016, and friend Cyril Brunner, 27, found themselves dealing with one in Smugglers’ Notch, near Stowe Mountain Resort. The accident wasn’t just because of their line choice and a snowpack with buried facets beneath feet of new snow, but also due to common heuristic traps that can befall skiers anywhere. 

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.

Nineteen seventy-three was my best year as a mountaineer. I climbed four north faces in the European Alps and narrowly missed the first ascent of a 25,000-foot summit in the Nepal Himalaya. But perhaps the most memorable experience of that year was an 80-mile ski traverse in May from Rogers Pass to the Bugaboos, across the glaciers and ice fields of the Selkirk and Purcell ranges.