Death on the mountain

By Tara Nelson

It was April 18, 2006, when Glacier resident Elijah Lee, 32, and his brother Tobias, 25, set out into the Mt. Baker Wilderness in what was to be just another day of back-country skiing.

The North Cascades had just gone through an intense storm cycle that had deposited close to three feet of fresh snow to the area. With a clear blue sky and warming conditions, Lee and his brother Tobias, a member of the International Free Skiers Association, had flown in from Reno to enjoy the fresh powder. The day before, the two had skied the Shuksan Arm four times, he said, and were feeling confident in their abilities and judgment.

Lee, an avid outdoor enthusiast and commercial salmon fisher in Alaska, who likes yogurt, almonds, the color blue, and spending his winters in the mountains, has more than 27 years of skiing experience, and has owned an avalanche transceiver for the past nine years. A native of Alaska, he and his brother had grown up hiking out of bounds and skiing “The Ridge” in Alaska.

“I have always felt that I have pretty good judgment when it comes to picking the line I want to ski, finding one that is not exposed to avalanche hazards,” he said. “I am ashamed to say that I have never taken an avalanche awareness course, and up until last April I thought I was doing just fine. ”

But as the temperatures rose, so had the avalanche danger, and on their final run just after the area shut the lifts down, his brother triggered a wet slide that rolled more than 1,500 feet into Rumble Gully.

The two brothers, along with friend Tom Walgren, awoke long before dawn. Their plan was to ski a chute behind Mt. Herman known as “Stone Man,” which is visible from the upper Mt. Baker Ski Area parking lot behind the right ridge of Mt. Herman.

It would be the third time Lee had skied Stone Man that year, and he said he thought the snow would still be in good shape, regardless of the previous days’ sun. But he knew they had to ski it early, before the day warmed and created dangerous conditions.

Lee sat in the parking lot that morning with his brother and his friend Tom Walgren discussing the temperature and safety, ultimately deciding that safe routes were “plentiful.”

It took the three of them more than two hours to reach the summit. At 8 a.m. the group of friends had completed their hike around Bagley Lakes around the icy south ridge of Mt. Herman and into the Mazama drainage basin, reaching the top of a steep chute they planned to ski down.

“It was a beautiful morning; with ice crystals dancing and the sun flirting and blue sky playing hide and seek,” Lee wrote in an email. “There is this weird entrance to it that forces one to get right on top of it to actually see down the chute. It is pretty spooky, because you don’t know if you are stepping out onto a huge cornice, all you see is the edge, then the mountains across the valley.”

Lee said he recalls a marked sense of discomfort at the top of the chute but he roped in anyway, tying himself to one of the trees and improvising a harness. After various stability tests, Lee jumped.

“The snow felt cold and dense, no slough developed,” he said. “I backed to the tree and untied the climbing rope. I had led the route and it was my idea, it only made sense that I be the one to ski first. I was the sacrificial lamb.”

The Stone Man chute is shaped like a “y”, with the main chute being the long leg and the entrance at the short leg, with the two legs being separated by a rock. Lee said he decided to “ski-cut hard and fast straight” across the top of the entrance to a safe point.

“If anything were to go, hopefully I would make it to the rocks,” he said. “I pushed hard and stayed light on my skis for this first ski-cut, maybe only twenty feet to the rocks, I came to an abrupt halt as my skis wedged into them. It looked good, far as I could tell.”

Toby went next, starting near the point where Lee had made his entrance to the chute. Lee had Tom’s video camera ready to shoot Tobias’ performance.

“He made three slow, steep perfect powder turns, which I saw through the viewfinder of this tiny camera before I heard a violent “snap,” he said. “I looked up just in time to watch as the slope beneath my brother accelerated from 10mph to 50mph in about one second, and then he disappeared out of sight. Just like that, gone. It was huge and sudden and crazy.”

Immediately following the incident, Lee said Tom began searching with his transceiver. Lee, shovel in hand, followed down the icy path to the bottom of the chute and across to where they thought Tobias might be buried. After finding one of Tobias’ skis at the bottom, the two began digging, probing shoveling and yelling.

“It seemed like an eternity,” he said. “ In reality I have no idea how long it was before we found him.”

Eventually, they found Tobias upslope visible by a partial glove sticking out of the snow and much closer to the surface than they thought, and ultimately unresponsive to repeated CPR attempts and chest compressions. He had died a quick death from a blunt trauma to the chest, for which Lee said, “I am thankful.”

After sending his brother off in the helicopter, Lee said one thing stuck out in his mind.

“I was left there in the snow alone,” he said. “It was past sunset and the alpenglow was incredible, Shuksan was the softest hue and there was purple in the sky. At that moment, I realized how lucky I was.”

“Every spring the entire nation of Japan stops and admires the blossoms of the Sakura, the cherry tree. The blossoms of the cherry tree fall quickly, at the height of their youth and beauty. Back in the day, samurai felt akin to, and related to the cherry blossom because so many of their brethren died young. Tobias is my samurai.”

Now, Lee said, he continues to tour extensively, a lot of times with just his dog, but that he follows the weather and avalanche forecasts daily, or as conditions change. Lee said although he has learned “many, many, many, many things” since Tobias died, he doesn’t want his brother’s death to prevent him from enjoying the one thing both of them lived for.

“This I know for sure: Tobias would not want his death to prevent anyone from enjoying this earth,” he said. “I believe Tob would want us all to just keep on ripping it up, whatever that personally entails.”