Adirondack Backcountry Ski Festival

A backcountry skier descends a birch glade in the High Peaks. Photo by Susan Bibeau.

The Adirondack Backcountry Ski Festival is back this weekend, and though most of the guided ski trips are booked, there are a number of cool events open to the public.

For starters, you can test skis and boots at Otis Mountain, a private hill with a rope tow south of Elizabethtown, and enroll in telemark and skinning lessons, taught by Ron Konowitz, and avalanche clinics, taught by Mike Kazmierczak, a representative of Dynafit and Mammut. It’s all free.

The clinics and demonstrations are on Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. A schedule can be found on the website of the Mountaineer, the festival’s host. Otis Mountain is on Lobdell Road off Route 9N (the turn is to the east).

At 6 p.m. Saturday, Backcountry magazine will host a dinner at Keene Valley Lodge, located a few doors from the Mountaineer.  Price is $20. After dinner, starting at 7:30 p.m., Backcountry will show two ski movies at the Mountaineer: The Freeheel Life and The Fine Line. Admission is $10.

As of today (Wednesday), all of the ski trips were booked except the Karhu Traverse, an intermediate tour through Avalanche Pass that starts in Tahawus and ends at Adirondak Loj. Karhu demo skis are available for this trip.

The Mountaineer will donate proceeds from the festival to the Adirondack Ski Touring Council and the New York Ski Educational Foundation.

Call the Mountaineer (518-576-2281) or check the store’s website for more information.

Interview with avalanche survivors

In light of Saturday’s avalanche on Wright Peak, I thought it’d be instructive to post an in-depth interview with two survivors of the avalanche that occurred in the same spot in February 2000.  Four skiers were swept up in the earlier avalanche, and one died.

The interview with Ron Konowitz and his then-wife, Lauren, appeared in the Explorer in 2003. Although usually reluctant to talk about the avalanche, they agreed to the interview in part to correct the record and in part to warn others of the avalanche danger in the Adirondacks.

 What emerged was the most detailed story of the disaster ever published and a frightening account of what it’s like to be caught up (and buried, in Lauren’s case) in an avalanche.

To read the interview, click the PDF files below.

Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Skiers caught in avalanche

Two backcountry skiers were partially buried in an avalanche over the weekend on the Angel Slides on Wright Peak—the location of a fatal avalanche in February 2000.

The Angel Slides on Wright Peak.

David Winchell, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said one man was pinned against a stump and buried up to his chest. The second was carried more than six hundred feet and buried up to his chest. Both men were able to dig themselves out and leave the area.

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise identified the skiers as Ian Measeck of Glens Falls and Jamie McNeill of Vergennes, Vt.

The skiers had dug a pit to test the snow before heading up the slope about noon on Saturday. While ascending, they heard “woofing” noises in the fresh snow—a sign of an unstable snow pack—and chose to backtrack. As they turned around, however, the snow gave way and carried them both down the slope.

Visible from Marcy Dam, the Angel Slides are bedrock slabs (one wide, one narrow) that were stripped of vegetation during a 1999 rainstorm. In winter, they are often skied. In 2000, an avalanche on the wide slab swept up four skiers. One of them, twenty-seven-year-old Toma Vracarich, was killed. Saturday’s avalanche also was on the wide slab. Winchell said the entire slab–300 feet wide by 1,200 feet long–avalanched.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Adirondack Almanack on the 2000 disaster and other avalanches in the Adirondacks.

On Monday, DEC issued a news release warning that recent snowfalls have increased the avalanche danger in the Adirondacks. Click on the link below to read it.

Avalanche news release PDF