Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Local woman swept up in avalanche

Other skiers in group unharmed

As Blackcomb Mountain celebrated Avalanche Awareness Days last weekend a local woman was swept away by a slide on an in-bound Whistler run.

Luckily Sandy Knapton survived the Class 1 avalanche, but the force of the slide cracked her femur as it carried her over 300 metres down Cockalorum.

Knapton was skiing with several of her closest friends when the avalanche happened around 11 a.m. Saturday. They had already had a fantastic run off the T-bar lift and were waiting with anticipation for the Peak Chair to open.

Once they got the green light for the area, following avalanche control, they headed up and then over toward West Bowl.

"We went in single file and two of my good friends proceeded to ski down,"said Knapton from Vancouver General Hospital where she is recovering.

"Then I saw (one of my friends) crashing down and I looked over and I saw another friend that was down and I began wondering why are they down? They are great skiers and that made me a little nervous standing there."

Despite the attack of nerves Knapton decided to set off after her friends. But she didn’t even have time to make that first turn before the ridge of snow she was standing on gave way underneath her.

"I felt the snow fall right out from underneath me and I did a few somersaults and I just remember – in great detail – that my right ski released right away and my left ski wasn’t releasing and I kept thinking I’ve got to get it off, I’ve got to get it off," said the long-time Whistler resident and mother of two.

Her left ski finally released but not before she heard the crack of her femur braking.

"And all the way down I was screaming as loud as I could and making everyone aware that there was an avalanche and to ‘help me’, screaming and swimming and then I came to a stop," she said.

Good friend Lorraine Vollmer rushed to Knapton’s aid, immediately calling patrollers on her cell phone. Within minutes help was there.

But all Knapton could think of at that moment was the fear that another slide was going to come down and carry off her closest friends and everyone trying to help.

"I was so scared of it coming down," she said. "It could take us all out, and so many of my good friends were with me.

"It was scary. It was very scary."

Meanwhile Knapton’s husband Dan, who works on Whistler Mountain, was listening on his radio to what was happening.

"He could hear the play by play of what was going on and he was terrified," said Knapton.

And one of Knapton’s daughters, both of whom were in ski programs that day, saw her mom being lifted by helicopter off the mountain.

"Of course she didn’t know it was me," said Knapton who asked for both nine-year-old Sammantha and eight-year-old Sydney to meet her at the Whistler Health Care Centre so she could tell them she was going to be OK.

She is hoping to be released from hospital by the end of the week but it will be six weeks before Knapton can put any weight on the leg, and three months before she sees real recovery. Her leg is pinned from the hip to the knee and there are 10 plates in it.

Family and friends have flocked to her bedside from Vancouver Island and even Calgary.

"I am so glad to be here, that’s for sure," said Knapton.

Whistler Mountain safety manager Dave Reid said the slide area was part of the avalanche control area on Saturday.

"It was one of those days where a lot of new snow came down and (avalanche control was done), but there are still pockets of powder and locals, well we chase those pockets," he said.

"And when you get those small pockets and you send five or six people in there jumping up and down that is when it can be moved."

Reid said Class 1 slides are seen occasionally on the mountain, especially during periods of continuous snowfall and wind as has been experienced recently. Whistler had close to 150 centimetres in the week leading up to the avalanche.

But it is very rare for mountain users to be injured in them.

Reid went to the site of the avalanche Sunday and found the snow to be loose and not the solid chunk style that often takes peoples’ lives.

Whistler-Blackcomb does avalanche control on more terrain than any other resort in North America said safety manager Brian Leighton.

"It is a rare occurrence when someone is injured but it does happen," he said. "We make it as safe as we can and we are proud of the work that we do."

Leighton urges anyone who is concerned to stop by the patrollers’ huts to get the latest.

There have been several avalanches in B.C. in the last two weeks, when much of the province has pounded with snow. A patroller and eight skiers were caught in an in-bound avalanche at Fernie on Jan. 14. All survived that slide.

Also on Jan. 14, an avalanche worker was killed by an avalanche near Island Lake Lodge, a cat-skiing operation near Fernie. The avalanche occurred while the skier was checking a weather station. The Class 3.5 avalanche was triggered naturally and was reported to have run beyond its known limits into the treed area where the weather station was.

On Jan. 7 a snowboarder was killed in a Class 2 avalanche in a permanently closed area at Kicking Horse resort.