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2025 Archive Index - All Editions

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He survived a 5 hour avalanche burial

[A remarkable story of survival and recovery]

Matt Potratz was 27 when his family gathered at his hospital bed and were told to consider turning the machines off. He had already died on the way to hospital and been resuscitated, but tests at hospital revealed no brain activity. "They said I was brain dead. Matt, now 44, had been buried under an Idaho avalanche, which flung him down a mountain and crushed him into a tree.

It was March 2009, and Matt, then 27, was living what many would have called “the dream”. A professional snowmobile athlete from Idaho, he travelled across the western United States and Canada, filming for extreme movies. He doesn't remember the avalanche, but his friends filled in the gaps afterwards. "They saw my bright orange helmet sticking out of the snow," Matt says. "They rushed over, dug all the snow out around it, and thought they'd found me that quick. They picked up an empty helmet, fully intact chin strap, but no Matt inside.” The group used avalanche beacons to find him. "They found my fingers sticking out of the snow. My ears, nose and mouth were totally packed. My airway was closed off. They took a finger and fished the snow out of my mouth to get my airway open.”

The rescue took five hours. Weather prevented a helicopter landing, so a ground crew had to transport him with a sled instead. The damage was catastrophic: a broken neck, shattered femur, three broken ribs, collapsed lung, broken facial bones, and severe brain trauma, with hematomas on both sides. Matt spent 88 days in hospital, the first half of which was in a coma "When I first came out of the coma, they gave me a pen and asked me to write my name. I couldn't. They asked me to write the alphabet. I couldn't. My vocabulary was very shallow, very childlike," he remembers.

Sixteen years on, Matt still lives with a completely paralysed his left arm but has rebuilt his life entirely. He is now 44, a motivational speaker, author, and podcast creator, as well as running a life insurance and retirement solutions business. "I was told I wouldn't walk again. I walk. I was told I wouldn't talk normally. Now I speak for a living," he says. "They said I'd have a hard time processing thought, and I've written a book with no assistance.”

[The Avalanche-Center archives have one incident at that time in Idaho but it does not appear to be this one. While the article says Matt was from Idaho it does not say where the avalanche incident occurred.]
More ... (The Mirror)

Date set for Scotland's new avalanche forecasting season

Scotland's new avalanche forecasting season will start on 11 December in six mountain areas. Lochaber, Glen Coe, Creag Meagaidh, Torridon and Northern and Southern Cairngorms are monitored for avalanche risk from between mid-December to mid-April. Last season, the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) had reports of 42 avalanches - the lowest number since the organisation was set up in 1988.
Source ... (BBC)

CDOT seeks $2 million for avalanche mitigation system

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has requested $2 million to replace the current Gazex system on U.S. 6 above Loveland Ski Area. Repeated failures have put the equipment at risk of catastrophic failure. The 10 exploders have experienced multiple failures over the past decade, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs. Mike Chapman, CDOT's winter operations manager, emphasized that the equipment catastrophic failures pose only a danger to the tubes themselves and not to the traveling public or CDOT workers.

CDOT has maintained backup systems, including an avalauncher — a device mounted in the bed of a truck that shoots shells to trigger avalanches. The avalauncher injured two workers in 2014 when a shell exploded inside the gun. CDOT began using the Gazex system the following year.

Chapman said the current situation won't increase closure risks for the highway, but does create additional challenges for workers. "Because of our redundancies, it's not necessarily that we have more risk to the public or more risk of closure. It's just more time consuming for my team," Chapman said.
More ... (9News)

Avalanches are of key importance to glaciers worldwide

A glaciology team led by WSL has estimated for the first time how much avalanches contribute to the ice mass balance of all the glaciers on Earth. Observations of individual Alpine glaciers have shown that up to 20 % of the snow falling on them comes from this avalanches. Now an international research team has estimated the influence of avalanches on all 200,000 glaciers on Earth – and was surprised by the results.

On average, 11% of the snow on Alpine glaciers comes from avalanches, 19% in the eastern Himalayas and as much as 22% in New Zealand, which tops the list. On individual glaciers, more than 50% of the snow can come from avalanches. In flatter mountain regions such as Iceland or Greenland, on the other hand, avalanches hardly make any difference. The results are published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
More ... (Informationsdienst Wissenschaft)