By David A. Gonzales
Photos by Julie Zell

In the past week, after the online dustup over the December 29, 2008 headwall avalanche at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, I felt like I’d barreled over a few people myself. When the avalanche occurred, I, like many others, was upset by the resort’s seeming reluctance to provide comprehensive information about the event, even after it was clear that nobody had been hurt. So I did what’s so easy to do today – wrote a screed then hit “send,” or in this case, “publish.”

Now, I’d like to clear things up, eat a few words, and share what I learned.

One: The day after the avalanche, I reported that the ski resort suppressed photos of the slide’s aftermath, because I’d heard a resort employee called a blogger to chew him out and demand his photos’ removal, and because this blogger had alluded to the resort’s request to yank them. I don’t know if resort management suppressed the photos. The night before I published my post about this, I wrote an email to a resort spokesperson asking if there was any managerial suppression. I did not receive an answer, and that’s what I should have reported.

Two: I was indignant about the resort covering up their web cam when the avalanche occurred. My indignation remained until a JHMR employee reminded me that in a chaotic rescue scenario such as the one after the avalanche, things can look desperate – people running around, bystanders acting irrationally, victims in bad shape – and nobody wants any judgments or conclusions about such an event drawn from blurry pictures taken mid-rescue. This makes perfect sense. I do think they could have turned the web-cam back on as soon as they knew everybody was safe, since it did take place on public land, and since those images would have provided additional information about dangerous avalanche conditions at the time.

Three: despite what commentors have claimed on this and other sites, no bloggers published any complaints, whatsoever, about how JHMR and the ski patrol have conducted avalanche reduction or rescues. Suggesting otherwise only makes it look like you can’t read. The Jackson Hole Ski Patrol are the best in the business. Nobody doubts or denies this.

What depresses me most about this controversy is what the family of David Nodine might have thought if they’d been following the blogs. How petty it all must have looked. I hope it did not make their grieving process more difficult.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from Nodine’s death, it’s that it seems he did what many of us have done before, but sadly didn’t get away with it. It appears that Nodine perished because he let his guard down, even after acknowledging the grave danger by wearing a tranceiver inbounds. It was not the day to be skiing, jumping, or lingering in the margins of such steep, intricate runs as Toilet Bowl. The patrol can’t possibly address every such marginal zone during serious storms, which is why it’s called avalanche reduction, not control. This reality intersected fatally with a familiar impulse – to take a risk on a few turns and a cliff huck too good to pass up. I think this tragedy shows just how tempting and distracting those impulses can be.

This does beg the question, however: if the resort won’t call it’s avy work “control,” then why do they purport to control the headwall? The slide last week garnered an R2 on a scale from R1 to R5, measuring the size of avalanches relative to their path. I’m no avalanche professional but that seems to indicate potential for headwall avalanches significantly more destructive and dangerous than last week’s. Check out the aerial pictures on jhunderground. The building is not just in the avalanche runout zone, it’s in the slide track. I understand that for logistical reasons, and for customer care, that’s the perfect spot for the restaurant. But not according to weather, terrain, and physics. Last week’s avalanche was the equivalent of a warning shot fired over the resort’s bow. Or a murmer from mother nature: move it or lose it. If anybody who knows what they’re talking about wants to refute this, please do.

Besides fears about bigger headwall avalanches, and questions about what information or images should be in or out of the public domain, last week’s event raised the issue of a suddenly accelerated local news cycle. Everybody wanted news about this avalanche instantaneously, and went to the TGR forums, Teton AT, JH Underground, The Snaz, the News and Guide, and the Planet to find it. The local clamor for immediate hard information was unprecedented. I wish that in response I’d been more scrupulous and not so quick to leap to conclusions. I apologize to everybody at JHMR whose job I complicated by my rush to present the information I had.

This is the reality we’re in. We go to nytimes.com and other sites to get this moment’s news, not this morning’s. Now we expect the same immediacy right here in the Hole, both from news sources and newsmakers. Why shouldn’t we? Modern media, even on a small scale, has the capabilities to deliver it. Personally, I need to insure that if I report current events, speed does not come at the cost of accuracy. Readers find the melding of news and opinion in blogs refreshing, since we all know that nothing going into somebody’s ears and out their fingers is ever going to be truly unbiased. But that doesn’t mean one can’t be thorough or accurate. I promise that in the future, when tackling news stories, I will do my best to be both.