THE TRAP
Iyell to the team to turn around, but my words fade into the cold roar of gale-force winds. Meanwhile, my face is being peppered by icy needles blowing in the 80km/h blasts; I try to pull my balaclava up to protect my exposed skin. I’m only half successful. I sit there momentarily, hunkered low, thinking we can still push for Mt Tasman’s summit. It is so close. But then we are hit again by another big gust. This one nearly topples us. With a mixture of emotions—disappointment being the most evident—I realise the summit is out of reach.
Mother Nature clearly has a different plan for us.
On one knee, holding hard onto my ice axe, I shout again to Sam and Tom to turn around, and point back down the ridge from where we just pitched. Tom hammers in a snow stake as our anchor, while I help him set up the rope so we can safely downclimb back to the media team. On the ridge above the couloir, I watch Sam survival-ski down the fifty-degree vertical pitch on rime ice. Alright, I think to myself. It’s way too dodgy for me to ski down the entrance of this couloir. I’ll just downclimb the first 200m and then put my skis on.
Once I get down to a suitable spot, I build a platform and gear up. My skis are on. I’m ready to drop. But I’m ready to drop not just into a line I’ve spent the last two years planning to ski, but also potentially into something far more dangerous, into something psychologists and mountain-safety professionals call a heuristic trap.
Let me take you back 14 years, to January 7, 2008, in Fernie, British Columbia. I was heading off to shoot photos on the northern slopes
