Woman Dies on Cat Trip
 

CBC News - British Columbia - B.C. snowboarder suffocates in head-first fall

Whenever I have been on a cat trip, the guides were very strict about the buddy system. Very tragic end to this.

Sounds like a tree well. That sucks.

It was a deep snow immersion. No tree well. Just snow so deep she got buried, couldn't free herself and suffocated. Scary. I guess this has happened one other time with this operation. During a previous owners watch. This is a tough one to pin down.

tragic news...its just so hard for me to picture how one can suffocate from snow. i just cant compare it to being buried for instance by soil/dirt or quick sand

When you are encased in anything panic can overwhelm you quickly.

Awful news. I can see how it could happen easily enough. If you fall forward on a steep enough slope and the pow was deep and loose you would just keep going.

i thought on cat and heli skiing there was always a guide at the back?

that is true

Probably a lot like quicksand in this case. Once she got under the snow she was probably unable to clear it out to breathe. Add an ice mask once covered and you don't have long. I will try to watch out for the final report on this one. It is scary stuff indeed.

You'll get a small taste of it at Jay, Polonia. Even falling into 3 or 4 feet of snow with your head downhill and loaded conifers overhead is enough to make you nervous. Compare that with BC where you can have 20 foot tree wells and incredibly deep pow and it's easy to see how a person can get into trouble.

R.I.P guess it can happen to anyone of us..:(