Men recall narrow escape from Chugach avalanche

ANCHORAGE - For a moment, there was only suffocating pressure, darkness and cold. Rory Stark struggled to get free, but couldn't move underneath the mountain of snow.

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He was buried alive.

Stark, 36, was backcountry skiing in Chugach National Forest with five friends when he and Tyler Johnson, 31, climbed near the top of Silvertip Mountain to ski the ridge line just after noon last Saturday. The slope was steep and icy, and the men had to take off their skis to kick-step their way up the mountain.

Aware of the avalanche danger in the area, the experienced skiers decided to skirt the ridge line to avoid triggering a slide. Johnson went first and made it about 500 yards before stopping to wait for his friend.

He turned and watched Stark ski down, carefully staying about 50 yards away from the tracks Johnson had left.

"He went about three turns, then it started," Johnson said. "It started pretty small but it grew fast and it was coming down on me."

Johnson skied out of the way, then turned to look, seeing only a blanket of white below. He thought all his friends were gone.

Tossed down the mountain

As soon as the snow began to shift, Stark turned to frantically ski back up, he said in an interview from his hospital bed Thursday.

But as he kicked hard, skiing gave way to desperate swimming in a sea of snow that sucked him down the mountain. At first the slide didn't seem too severe, but as it picked up speed, Stark fought for his life, trying to force room for an air pocket in front of his face when the slide stopped.

It stopped, but he had no air.

Then, as he was beginning to lose consciousness, the snow began to slide once more, beating his head on debris as he struggled to breathe.

"I was definitely taking a beating - I felt like a rag doll," Stark said. "It was just like a tidal wave. It got you down there and, you know, you can't get a breath."

The slide finally spit him out near Sixmile Creek, about 1,500 feet below where he started. He could barely see because of the snow in his face, and a bone was protruding from his leg with blood spurting from the wound.

The three friends who stayed low on the mountain, Brian Stibitz, Mark Corsentino and Chip Trennien, rushed to him, along with a family from Cordova that was also skiing in the area. They covered him in clothes, and the family gave him a splint, Stark said.

Johnson, scanning the mountain as he descended, found them. He couldn't believe Stark was alive.

"I thought there was no way anyone could survive that fall," Johnson said.

With nobody missing, Stibitz ran to call for help. It took rescuers nearly four hours to reach the difficult terrain near Mile 61 on the Seward Highway.

"There was a steep gully and a snow bridge, and they didn't want to risk bringing him back across that," Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said later.

Troopers could only get to about 400 feet from Stark. They called the Rescue Coordination Center, which deployed a Pave Hawk helicopter. The chopper brought him to Providence Alaska Medical Center, where he remained Thursday.

"It makes you feel good to hear that chopper coming, that's for sure," he said.

Avalanche risk high

The slide Saturday was the result of a weak layer of surface hoar buried under several feet of snow on a slope of about 45 degrees, according to the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center.

There continues to be a danger of human-triggered avalanches on slopes greater than 35 degrees, the center says. At least five have occurred in the past two weeks, with three last weekend- the Silvertip avalanche and two in the Summit Lake area.

Stark's leg shattered in at least five places, and doctors say it will be six weeks before he's walking again. He lost a lot of blood, but expects to be fine in the end.

"I just got lucky, because as big as it was, there wasn't much you could do," Stark said. "I'll definitely get back to it. I'm not looking for danger at all. I just like backcountry skiing."