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| | Avalanche on the Baumgarten area in the Schlierseer Mountains (Germany) on Feb. 15, 2009 | | | zoz wrote at 24.02.2009 17:55 |
On Sunday February 15th, 2009 I released an 80m wide snow slab on the eastern slopes of Baumgartenscheid (1455m) around 13:30 hours. After receiving approx. 50 – 70 cm of snow during the previous days, I went by myself on my usual ski tour to the Lahnerkopf and to Baumgartenscheid between Schliersee and Tegernsee. After encountering champagne powder at the “Lahner” I wanted to complete the tour on the eastern Baumgarten slopes. This cold and sunny day brought at least 20 other skiers to this route and hence the sparsely treed Baumgarten run had been more or less skied out. Nobody else was one the slope when I skied it. I kept to the left edge of the regular route.
I entered the 25 - 35º slope with the usual precaution, stopped once more in order to check for a good line and noticed already during the next turn that the snow started to slide under my skis. First I thought it must be just a small slab, but was immediately pushed over a large depression in the snow and was headed head first towards a tree. Due to the shovel effect of my skis which only released a little bit later my head and upper body were suddenly pulled under the snow and I swam just as I would in a wave towards the depression. Only now (relatively late) I realized that my life was in danger und frantically searched for the ABS release handle. It took three tries in this mass of snow to find it. I heard the noise of the inflowing gas and was immediately pulled to the top as if in an elevator. Lying on my belly I swam on top of the avalanche for approx. 50 – 60m until I came to rest on a slight uphill, obviously slowed by the decreased speed of the avalanche due to the change in terrain.
After I recovered from the first shock I quickly realized that the ABS backpack (along with a fortunate change in terrain) had saved my life. The snow slab ran for about 300 – 400m until it came to a halt in less steep and more densely treed terrain. Of course my skis where nowhere in sight. I had to struggle through hip deep snow for almost one hour. As luck would have it, not even one skier came along in almost 45 minutes. Hence a transceiver wouldn’t have been much help to me.
The following day friends inspected the fracture line and took the picture above. The picture of the 80cm deep fracture line has been taken right at the regular run. I must have been the ‘last drop in the bucket’ that day, but luckily I had my guardian angle, the ABS airbag, with me.
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