Survivor of avalanche talks after potentially fatal Colorado slide: "I wouldn't be alive if my friends weren't so careful and well prepared"
The dangerous duality of Colorado's landscape has always been there; incredible snowfall creates magnificent playgrounds for adventure-seeking individuals, but within those playgrounds lays inherent risk.
Cassy Gates was thrown front and center into that risk just last week, as she went snowmobiling with her boyfriend Daniel Vigeant and some of their friends on the Grand Plateau in Grand Junction.
She said the crew went over the avalanche forecast for the day (there was a fresh layer of snow which they knew meant an increased risk of avalanches) but picked the spot they were going in part because of the low angles on the majority of the routes they were taking, lowering risk. They tested their avalanche gear, checked to make sure they had equipment and headed off for a fun day.
Gates said she reached a point where she chose to go a different route than the rest of her friends. She said that's where things started to go wrong.
"I couldn't really see the pitches of the snow," Gates explained. "I don't know if you've ever been skiing before and dealt with the flat light, but it's just like 'I can't tell where I am right now,' it's pretty disorienting."
That inability to judge the slope she was on landed her on something far steeper than she meant to get into. She felt it before she saw it.
"I realized... this isn't right," Gates said. "I tried to turn around, and at that point, I got thrown forward off my snowmobile...it kind of ran over me. Unbeknownst to me that is when the whole slope broke. I got buried and pulled down the hill, my sled was fully buried too."
All the while, boyfriend Daniel Vigeant and friends were keeping a close eye on her and went "full throttle" towards the slide that had buried Gates at that point.
"The whole thing popped, maybe 50-100 feet above her," Vigeant said. "Thankfully the snowmobile rolled over her, could have been a lot worse, she essentially just disappeared."
Under feet of snow, Gates was encased in a frozen tomb, unable to move.
"I was stuck upside down with my hands outstretched in front of me," Gates said, recounting the horrible experience. "All I had was my foot, could kind of wiggle my foot a little bit and it felt close to the surface, so I just wiggled that a bunch."
"I thought back to the morning when we did a beacon check and knew that mine was on."
That tiny part of the boot sticking out, along with the beacon she had on was eventually what helped Vigeant and friends to find her just minutes after she was buried. He regrets the mistake of not having his shovel with him at that very moment, but the other avalanche safety gear he and their friends had on them helped to zero in on Gates.
"I'm digging with my bare hands," Vigeant said. "Not what you want to do."
They were able to get Gates out of the snow where she was plunged at a 30-degree angle head first. They found her unconscious.
"I blacked out I think," Gates said. "I panicked myself into a blackout which sounds pretty dark but I'm pretty grateful for it and not having to be conscious throughout the whole thing."
"Like she said, a blessing in disguise," Vigeant added. "If she was awake that whole time she could have suffocated, I mean, the whole breathing aspect of her blacking out was what saved her."
A terrifying moment for everyone involved. Vigeant told your reporter in the mountains Spencer Wilson that he considered the worst when he watched her go under.
"I was thinking she was going to be gone, honestly, thinking about how I am going to tell her parents this," Vigeant said as Gates patted his back. "It was tough. but very thankful that we were able to get her out. It is just something backcountry goers are fearful of and try to avoid at all costs and here we are in the middle of it."
"But we came out ok, very thankful."
This story is one you don't hear too often, for whatever reason. But Gates believed it was important to spread the feeling of heightened awareness of the dangers of avalanches especially as we move into some of the historically busiest times for slides in Colorado.
"A lot of times these don't end up positive," Gates said. "We have seen a lot of avalanches this February alone, it is a really scary number and I think this just highlights how taking those avalanche classes, running beacon drills with your friends, how all this practice can pay off in the end."
"How it can lead to an organized and successful rescue mission...because I wouldn't be alive if my friends weren't so careful and well prepared."
