Near Miss

North face of Mount Matier, Coast mountains of British Columbia, moments before the avalanche 

Be careful what you wish for.

I'd been going through a transition, hitting rock bottom to be honest, and I decided to huck it all and head into the mountains.  It was a perfect time to upgrade my mountaineering skills with a guiding company in British Columbia.  I love it in the mountains.  It re-centers me.

The night before our summit day I was lying awake in the middle of the night, and I tossed a half-baked, hail Mary sort of a prayer at the roof of my tent.  "Hey God, I don't know if you're there, or if you even give a f***, but if you are, throw me a bone.  Show me something.  Give me a reason to keep going."  That is literally pretty much what I said.

I don't encourage people to pray "prove it" prayers like that.

On Monday, June 26, 2017, our party made our way up the Anniversary Glacier in the Joffre Group of the Coast Mountains of southwestern British Columbia, Canada, where I live.  I have a bit of training in glacier travel and was picking the guides' brains on their route finding and decision making.  I was curious more than anything. I trusted these ACMG (Association of Canadian Mountain Guides) guides and wanted to learn.

We broke into three groups, rotating leadership, and crested the pass between Joffre Peak and Matier, and linking the Anniversary to the Matier Glacier.  We passed under Matier, then summitted Mount Hartzell less than an hour later.  

We turned to admire Matier, and at 10:42 hrs, we watched it avalanche before our eyes.

Same view of Matier, moments after the first photo, above. 

Whether it was one of the yahoos in our party howling from the summit, or more likely, the morning sun visible in the photo, a cornice collapsed, causing the huge "step down" avalanche you see before you.  You can see a large fracture line two thirds of the way up, then another, down to bare rock, just below the midpoint, hence the name.  

Our guide Mat estimated it was a 300 meter (1,000 feet) avalanche with a 400 meter (1,300 feet) deposition zone, 1-2 meters high.  Blocks of snow as big as cars covered our tracks where we'd travelled just minutes before.

Our footprints disappeared, minutes after we passed through.  

You can read the ACMG mountain report here.  Our guide writes:

We had a near miss yesterday in the Joffre area. We left from camp at motel 66 at 6am. With little recovery overnight we decided to climb Mt Hartzel.
We traversed below the N face of Matier about 250m from the bergschrund in the flats. There where some old cornice debris in the flats and we made sure to stay further away as there was still one last cornice lingering up high. We summited Mt Hartzel around 10am. At 1030am while enjoying the views from the summit we witnessed first hand the upper cornice fail and trigger the entire N face of Matier to basal snow/ice. The crown was around 3m and the debris pile ran about 400m into the flats. Needless to stay our tracks got annihilated!

Mat said that in twenty years in the backcountry, he'd never come so close to death.  Not necessarily religious, Mat invoked God and divine intervention multiple times in the next few minutes.  "Somebody in this group is doing something right."  "Angels are looking out for us."  "God's looking out for somebody here."

And of course, my thoughts went back to my half assed prayer the night before.

They say the mountain can take you whenever it wants to.   And so, apparently, can God.  It was as if the man upstairs was saying, "Listen.  I can take you whenever I want to.  It's not for you to decide.  It's for me. You have work to do yet."  I got the message.  If I'm still here, God must not be done with me yet.  He's got stuff for me to do.  To be.  There's a plan, and I'm part of it.  

Well, so what?  He isn't done with you, either.  Whatever you believe about God, however low you may feel, however lost your way, you and me?  Each of us has a part to play. 

The greater near miss would be to miss that opportunity.