Snowboarding In July, A Rescue Mission
What it's like to use your Wilderness First Responder training for real.
A loud scream followed the sharp crack against the rock. It belonged to Jen. The following outcries were interrupted by gasps and thuds. The source of the noise came from the other side of the rock wall from where Matt and I were perched. Turning toward the source of the sound, Jen emerged from the neighboring chute. She was sliding, and gaining speed. There was no snowboard on her feet. Her head and face were a dark maroon, the same color that highlighted her path down the snow. Jen hadn't been wearing a helmet.
I didn't notice that Jen was in this photo at the time that it was taken. If I had, maybe things would’ve played out differently.
On July 2nd, 2017, I woke up at 4a.m. in my hammock. I packed up my sleeping bag and quietly tossed it into my already loaded 4Runner, doing my best not to wake up anyone else. A few friends and I had been camping in the Popo Agie Wilderness outside of Lander, Wyoming near the Wind River Range.
By 11a.m. I was putting on snowboard boots, roadside on Beartooth Pass, around 250 miles away and just shy of the Montana boarder. As I cinched my boot tight, the lace frayed and snapped. Great. I kicked myself for forgetting to bring a spare. Had I just driven over five hours to ride a couloir in duct-taped boots? Maybe. Sorry, mom.
I looked across the dirt outcropping I was using as a parking lot, and approached a Subaru stuffed with gear. Saying hello quickly turned into getting a boot lace from Jen, who then introduced me to Matt. They smiled, pointing to the same chute I’d been looking to ride. Both were snowboarders. Rad.
At the top of the 10,947 foot mountain pass, Matt and I eyed the line below us with cartoonish smiles on our faces. Jen had stayed below on the ridge, planning to ride a different chute. They were working on filming a snowboarding edit, and Jen was the big boss behind the lens. Super rad.
Matt strapped into his board to drop first. Once he’d reached the safe zone below the rock face, he hollered a nice, crisp "CLEAR". I took a photo from the top of my line, and then dove into the chute myself. I met him at the bottom with a fist bump after dancing my way through the chute and the soft, summer snow conditions.
I looked back up to see Jen standing at the top, on the other side of the chute from where Matt and I had descended. She was peering over the overhanging cornice (as seen on the left side of the first photo). Leaning out to get eyes on her route below her, she held her board and yelled something I couldn't quite make out. Not good, not good at all. Bad.
Jen and Matt had come up from Salt Lake City, Utah. They were searching for snow, too. We wild ones—we crazy, committed, fun-seekers, and pursuers of passion—out here snowboarding in July. It’s something the average person probably would never do, let alone understand. But they’d had a certain look in their eyes. I saw it when I met them in the parking lot. It held an unspoken acknowledgement and understanding that we instantly shared.
When we’d been standing on top of our line, Matt and I had both noted the clouds encroaching on our sunlight. The day was warm, especially in the sun, making the snow soft, but firm. Snow tests had shown that the pack was solid and didn't propagate or produce slough, but it was a wee bit slushy. Our turns had cut the snow like butter, remaining etched in the slope behind us while we rode. Though my hoody was raised, covering my neck from the sun, I could feel a slight breeze coming through the fabric. A nice, symbolic nod to the flow state of snowboarding.
CRACK.
Without looking at each other, Matt and I sprang across the slope in unison. We weren't aimed at Jen, but below her—riding toward where she would be by the time we got there, so that we could intercept her slide. She was moving fast, and we needed to physically catch her so she wouldn't careen to the bottom.
Beneath the flowing blood, Jen’s darting eyes told me two things. First, that she was awake. Second, that she was really, really scared. While I was quickly removing my backpack to get at my first aid kit I asked a question that I already knew the answer to: “Do either of you have any wilderness medicine training?” I broke the silence, took a deep breath, and quickly followed up with “I’m a wilderness first responder, can I help?”
Recreating in the backcountry comes with risk. That risk is often multiplied significantly by a lack of cell phone service to call for help in an emergency. I explained what I was doing as my hands searched Jen’s head and neck for injury. I forced a smile. I hadn’t found anything other than the gash in her forehead, a broken nose, and the baseball sized lump protruding from above her opposite eye. Which was good, all things considered, but it also told me her head had made at least three points of contact during her fall.
The flash of lightning was concerning.
I tried for a tone of voice that wouldn’t cause unnecessary alarm, but would convey urgency. Jen’s vitals were remarkably stable. She didn’t think she’d lost consciousness, and was completely coherent, which was a miracle. She knew her name, where we were, the time of day, and what we were doing. She even knew who the POTUS was, but admittedly wasn’t happy about it. She cracked a smile.
My search for injuries to the rest of her body had come up empty, except for minor scratches on her hands and wrist from trying to stop her slide down the snow. Even though I explained what I was doing, I could tell my yells for help and waving arms were making Jen uncomfortable. But they were necessary. I was only one person, and Jen needed to get to a hospital, now. Despite her positive-ish condition, there could still be internal injuries we couldn’t account for.
If the people in the distance on the road had heard or seen my efforts to communicate, I couldn’t tell. I monitored Jen’s vitals, and any other signs that would indicate a change to her state. Since Jen didn’t have her snowboard anymore, she had to slide down the rest of the way on her butt. Matt and I flanked either side of her to support her while she slid. We also used the handle of my avalanche shovel from my backpack as a make-shift brake for her to dig into the snow.
At the bottom of the slope, and at the intersection of the snow and grass, there were a couple of hikers that had heard my calls for help. They had seen everything. They saw Jen’s entire fall as she was strapping into her snowboard, which Matt and I had not due to the rock face blocking our line of sight. After the steep hike up to the parking lot, Matt drove Jen to the hospital 45 minutes away in Red Lodge, Montana.
The hikers returned to their car, and continued on to Beartooth Lake. I hitched a ride back to where we three had left my 4Runner at the top of the pass, stowing my gear in silence. I untied my boots, pausing to examine the lace that Jen had given me. A faint smile emerged on my face in stark contrast with the knot in my stomach. It was 2pm. I exhaled, and embarked on the five hour trip home.
Jen’s courage and ability to maintain her composure in the face of significant adversity is what got her off of the mountain, and eventually to the hospital. That, and Matt’s equal command of composure. I was grateful for his unrelenting commitment to getting our trio off of the slope. Jen had been able to walk herself out. She walked away alive. A week prior, someone else had fallen down a chute in Beartooth Pass while backcountry skiing. They, unfortunately, did not walk away alive.
Jen was lucky.
My phone buzzed around 7pm. It was Jen. Her scans had comeback clean.
onward.
P.S. If someone came to mind while reading, feel free to share this with them. That’s how you can help me grow this thing so we can keep doing it. I appreciate the support—it means a lot!