Replying to Ski media, what's your response?

By JSmith

This past Sunday afternoon, legendary big mountain professional skier, Jamie Pierre, was killed by an avalanche within the boundaries of the still-closed Snowbird Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. I first got the bad news in the hinterlands of Idaho while returning home to Jackson from an ice climbing session in Bozeman. Driving through the frozen darkness near Ashton, I spiritually joined many others in feeling shocked and saddened at the loss of his life. Though we had not been in touch recently, I met Jamie about 10 years ago when I crashed on his couch in Sandy while in town to do some work for a magazine at the OR show. Over the next few years, I was privileged to share several days of Wasatch snow with him. Jamie Pierre was a memorable character and I am glad to have had the opportunity to know him.

As much as I feel sadness at the sudden loss of a man who was an influential and exciting skier, a father, husband and friend to many, there is a separate aspect of the situation that is giving me an angst that won’t go away and needs to be spoken.

Three days after the avalanche, the expected blitz of snow sports media has flooded countless thousands of Facebook newsfeeds with a string of sincere tribute articles and videos commemorating Jamie’s life and achievements on the snow. Though dominant industry websites like Freeskier and Powder have shared the accident report by the Utah Avalanche Center, the discussion about what really happened on the mountain screeches to a halt there. The snow sports community, with the tone set by its endemic media, stops at paying tribute to the pro skier and the man, instead of also discussing the exceptionally dangerous conditions and decision making that led to the accident. If there is discussion of the accident, it is quickly dismissed as part of the inherent risks of backcountry skiing.

Both because this grief is fresh and because pro skiers, similar to athletes of other heavily marketed sports, exist on a deified pedestal, it is difficult for many to confront the sensitive core of this situation. The risks that Jamie and his partner assumed that day were well beyond industry standard and errant decision-making played a central role in the accident. People make mistakes in the mountains and however much they are idolized, the truth is that pro skiers are actually not descended from an omnipotent hippy ganja snow god. With that out of the way, let’s be straight up: Jamie Pierre made judgment calls that cost him his life.

While I am no paragon of snow science, a read of the accident report and its stunning photos clearly demonstrate that the thin early snowpack was particularly volatile on 11/13. Jamie and his partner experienced this volatility in dramatic form by (possibly unknowingly) remotely triggering a large avalanche on a similar aspect just before they made the fatal decision to drop into an arguably more dangerous line – the South Chute – a 40 degree avalanche path/terrain trap festooned with deadly, early season obstacles. Although the report indicated that its absence was irrelevant to the final outcome, Jamie and his partner decided to skip carrying avalanche rescue gear into the mountains that day, nor did they read that morning’s avalanche report in which the danger was reported at Considerable to High.

My analysis cannot credibly go much further, but I just can’t shake the sense of disbelief that an elite 38 year old backcountry skier and long-time Snowbird local would choose to jump into South Chute last Sunday given the information that he must have gathered about the dangers present in the snowpack at that time.

Instead of taking an honest look at a terrible accident that should have been completely preventable, most snow sports media outlets have traded genuine dialogue for fantasy-land fruit punch. Perhaps the most egregious example is provided by Unofficial Networks. On Monday morning, they published an article with the incredibly out of touch title, Skiing Alta on Avalanche Day. Avalanche Day – that sure sounds fun. Kind of like Christmas? Valentines Day? St. Pattys? As if the title is not strange enough under the circumstances, the post features a pair of video edits that tacitly encourage casual skier behavior in the backcountry, even though a person was killed just across the same mountain that very day. The first video, which is produced by Unofficial Networks and appears on their own Vimeo page is titled “Alta Pow and crowds 11-13-11”. The caption beneath the player reads: “Skiing at Alta with friends in the new pow. There were lots of avalanches going off so we stuck to the Lone Pine zone and lapped it up. Today was a sad day because we lost ski legend Jamie Pierre in a slide today”.

If this groggy land of happy shred dreams is reality for some, there is another reality that needs to be recognized; that of the rescuers working at the grim scene in dangerous conditions last Sunday afternoon. The Utah Avalanche Center’s 11/13 /11 Gad Valley accident report concludes with this simple statement. “…other parties at Alta continued to ski and knock down avalanches ….while the rescue was in progress. Creating another incident during this situation is unacceptable.”

A look at the sport of climbing, another risky endeavor of passion, provides a bit of perspective. When an accident strikes a well known climber, it seems that the climbing community, supported by its media, is able to simultaneously grieve and pay tribute while dissecting the accident in order to learn and improve safety practices. In snow sports, the opposite mindset holds court. The marketed image of a pro athlete and the desire to keep that image intact regardless often comes at the cost of the legitimate public dialogue that is needed to make us stronger and safer. A candid discussion of the decisions and events that led to Jamie’s death would not denigrate the memory of Jamie Pierre. Instead, it would make the time that he spent on this planet, as a person and a skier, even more valuable.

Jamie and his family had just moved north to Big Sky, MT. As this excellent interview by BombSnow.com shows, the community was welcoming him and he was clearly excited to be there. Jamie, you’ll be missed!