Friday, October 12, 2012

ESPN Avy Series & Stevens Pass


ESPN -- the website -- has started a six-part series on avalanches.

Actually, really seven parts, as the intro piece is quite compelling.

The first part (or is that the second part?) profiles the 34 avalanche victims from this past winter.

This is accompanied by a separate photo essay (making for eight parts total I suppose).

(BTW, maybe it was just me, but I had some troubles in Chrome, although IE displayed it perfectly.)
Positioning your cursor/pointer in the lower left pops up a brief bio.
The bios in the photo essay lack any information about the deadly incidents, but just seeing one victim after another (sometimes with family) makes for some very emotional viewing.

Note that the author has an article about the Steven Pass incident in the latest issue of Outside magazine, but no mention of it yet on the Outside website (although a brief blurb is available elsewhere from the author)..

Her ESPN piece also has many references to the Steven Pass incident, especially in the conclusion:
"For me, the lessons learned extend much further. I came face-to-face with death. I made a choice to ski terrain that came very close to killing me, and did kill three of my friends."
"I think constantly about what happened that day at Stevens Pass. Like a war zone, a slow-motion series of horrific moments is burned into my brain. I think about the soundless cracking of the avalanche, and how, in those first few moments afterward, as I skied down the now-icy slide path with my beacon in search mode, my mind and body went into overdrive, terror and focus running through my veins. I can still hear the frantically ticking clock of my heartbeat during the ensuing search for our missing friends."
"And worst of all, I recall the moment of realization, after 10 minutes of searching, 10 more of probing and shoveling, and nearly an hour of members of our group conducting CPR, when we knew we'd lost them. That sensation -- one of terror, sorrow and utter disbelief, which followed me back to the base of the ski area, in the car on the ride home, throughout the ensuing media blitz that followed, and for days, weeks and months after -- buckled my knees and changed my mindset forever."

No comments:

Post a Comment