
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek - tysone
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/
======
grecy
I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies,
and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski
patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses.

After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear:

"You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back
country".

I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing".

Reading this article it was very hard not to angry. Severe lack of training
and practice caused deaths.

* 16 people is a huge no-no.

* The fact that someone in the group (a Liftie!) didn't even have a beacon should be a HUGE warning sign.

* Hitting the slope at 11:45 seems wrong to me - the day had warmed by then allowing the snow to consolidate.

* No clear route identification or plan

* The didn't dig a snow pit to assess avalanche conditions on the slope they were about to hit - my personal number 1

* Multiple people dropped in at once - the biggest no-no of all!

* They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!

* Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.

* Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.

* Calling 911 to report a body is a freaking waste of time and could cost others' buried their lives. KEEP SEARCHING AND DIGGING!

I hate to say it: They were asking for it, and a lot of them knew better.

Please, please, please, never go into the back country without training. Even
a weekend course will be great. Don't let your friends or those more
experienced than you convince you it's not needed - anyone that says that is
not worth going with, because you are risking your life with people that don't
know what they're talking about.

EDIT: If you want the first-person avalanche experience, watch this video. I
go snowboarding here all the time. Turn the sound way up to really feel it.
This person was saved by well trained back country ski partners.
<http://vimeo.com/6581009>

~~~
gamble
Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the
survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where -
individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no
one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a
whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to
question the group.

~~~
bencpeters
IIRC Outside Magazine did an article about it in the past few months too,
although I have not read it.

~~~
ISL
[http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-
sports/T...](http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-
sports/Tunnel-Vision-November-2012.html)

~~~
gamble
Thanks! That was the article I was thinking of.

------
jrwoodruff
The NYT just kinda blew my mind. A newspaper article just blew my mind. This
is, by far, the best multimedia storytelling I think I've ever seen. Kudos to
the team involved in putting this together, you've shown me the future of
media and the internet.

~~~
freyfogle
Is anyone from the NYT here and can you give any insight into how long this
project took to complete? Is this a beautiful one off, or is the goal that
this format eventually becomes the new norm?

~~~
c1sc0
It says right at the bottom, copied for your convenience:

Graphics and design by Hannah Fairfield, Xaquín G.V., Jon Huang, Wayne
Kamidoi, Sam Manchester, Alan McLean, Jacky Myint, Graham Roberts, Joe Ward,
Jeremy White and Josh Williams. Photography by Ruth Fremson. Video by
Catherine Spangler.

Additional video by Eric Miller and Shane Wilder.

Kristen Millares Young contributed research. The reporting for this article on
the Feb. 19 avalanche at Tunnel Creek was done over _six months_. It involved
interviews with every survivor, the families of the deceased, first responders
at Tunnel Creek, officials at Stevens Pass and snow-science experts. It also
included the examination of reports by the police, the medical examiner and
the Stevens Pass Ski Patrol, as well as 40 calls to 911 made in the aftermath
of the avalanche. The Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research
provided a computer-generated simulation of the avalanche, based on data
accumulated from the Stevens Pass accident report and witness accounts.
Additional sources are: LIDAR data from King County GIS Center; Iowa
Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University; Mark Moore, U.S. Forest Service;
National Avalanche Center.

~~~
axusgrad
How much all this quality reporting and presentation cost? I have a feeling
that in-depth journalism doesn't pay for itself.

------
arscan
I think this works because the little videos in the breaks actually do a great
job of complementing the content of the article (and happen to be pretty).

There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks
were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the
article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more
harm then good for somebody actually reading the interview. They were more
distracting than anything.

I have a feeling that we'll see a lot more of this technique in the future. I
personally hope that it doesn't just get slapped on for its visual appeal, but
rather as a medium to present value-added content (like this NY Times article
did).

[1] <http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/>

~~~
tsunamifury
I dont think this works at all. Its heavy, difficult to read, and full of
distractions. The fade in animations are unnecessary and the parallax
scrolling adds nothing to the story. The multimedia functions more as
footnotes or interruptions that route you outside of the narrative.

Its mobile-unfriendly and breaks the UI of NYT.com.

~~~
jobu
Wow. I couldn't disagree more. The integration of the extra content to the
context of the story really added another level for me.

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scott_s
The best long-form presentation of an article or essay I have ever seen on the
internet.

~~~
subsystem
It's great, but I can't help to get flashbacks to the mid '90s multimedia era.
If someone would have shown me this as the future cutting edge back then, I
probably would have been disappointed.

~~~
codewright
Taste matters.

90s multimedia rarely had it.

~~~
subsystem
I think most of the encyclopedia CDs, like Microsoft Encarta, were quite
tasteful. At least for their time. A blast from the past:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4ptApL-k4>

------
technotony
I've a lot of experience in back-country, including places like Iran where I
skied several peaks. The one time I got into trouble (we had to be rescued by
helicopter) was a scarily similar situation to this. I was with a large group
(12) of some of the most experienced back-country people I've ever met. I was
far and away the least experienced. This group included two Everest
summitteers and the head of a mountain rescue service. Because everyone was so
experienced they all assumed everyone else was taking the right decisions so
they could switch off and relax. Group dynamics are everything in this
situation - as they are in any sufficiently complex environment. Luckerly,
after a cold night in a snow hole, we were rescued but my learnings were:

1) You need to always have a leader

2) The whole group needs to be aware of the plan at all times, you cannot over
communicate

3) Listen to the nagging voice of intuition - if something feels wrong check
that feeling out

4) Experts are not always on the top of their name, especially when tired or
cold

Stay safe this winter people!

~~~
yitchelle
Great advice! These set of advice can even translated into this crazy startup
work that we all live in!

------
ISL
The presentation is impressive. May future articles be so well-presented.

The people killed in Tunnel Creek and around our region on the same day were
good friends, parents, and people.

This slide, in particular, has attracted so much attention because those
involved are professionals and because the event resonated so strongly within
the ski media community.

Missing from a lot of this accident's coverage is how very much life the slide
victims had lived. We can honor them by living as well as they did.

Jim Jack, head judge for the Freeride World Tour, skiing with kids on the
hometown hill: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30>

Those of you at startups may find resonance here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ>

~~~
chair6
I was riding at Stevens the day before this went down. It was deep,
backcountry avalanche risk was high. Crappy footage here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU>

Ditto that sentiment. Live passionately, look out for others.

------
chair6
Snowboarding (resort and backcountry) is my preferred diversion from computers
and 'real' life, and I was riding at Stevens the day before Tunnel Creek slid.
This is a very meaningful presentation of a tragic event, and very real
example of the risks involved in getting out in the snow.

For those of you more interested in the avalanche / snow-science side of
things than that this doesn't render properly on your mobile device, check out
<http://nwac.us>. Specifically, here is their initial analysis of the Tunnel
Creek incident:
[http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_20...](http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_2012/Preliminary_Tunnel_Creek_Avalanche_Accident_2-19-2012.pdf)

------
yock
If you read enough survival memoirs you start to see elements of these stories
common between them. One of those elements is concern over how one will be
seen by their peers for expressing caution.

I don't like to speak authoritatively about most subjects, but I feel very
strongly about this one thing. Vanity has no place in the back country. Gosh,
in a group of 16 people, not all of whom are acquainted, if at least one
doesn't think you're a sissy then it's plainly impossible that everyone is
well informed of the risks being taken.

------
scottcha
As an owner of an Avalanche Safety app mobile shop I'd say its amazing to get
some of this innovation in to articles like this.

Getting users to think about the judgement and impact of the choices they make
when they are seeking this rush is a very challenging. Breaking the mold to
make a possibly more impactful presentation is exactly what Avalanche
education needs.

~~~
mscarborough
I completely agree. As a person that gets 50+ days skiing per year, and loves
powder, you have to PAY ATTENTION. Those powder runs look great until you
understand how wrong it can go.

And people, don't jump into tree runs to avoid anything. It's plenty fast in
there and if you are too slow, you're dead.

It's OK to ask for a ride down from the lifties.

------
sillysaurus
In case it's helpful, here's a screenshot of what this article looks like on
an iPhone (Chrome): <http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png>

It won't let me zoom out or zoom in. The only way to read the article is by
dragging back and forth repeatedly.

Technical/debugging note: everything was fine before the top header image
fully loaded. I could zoom out and zoom in before that image showed up, so
therefore that header image is somehow removing the ability to zoom for iPhone
users (and is also causing the 200% zoom-in).

~~~
alecperkins
Odd. It looks perfectly fine to me, in both mobile Safari and mobile Chrome.
The text is completely visible, with a little padding on either side, and
videos all slide nicely into the text column.

------
MichaelApproved
Trying to read this story was really frustrating on an iPhone. I had to keep
swiping left and right because the zoom was locked to about double the width
of my screen.

It's a shame because, from the sound of the other comments, it sounds like a
really nice layout on the desktop. It's a shame they destroyed the mobile
experience.

~~~
nikkisnow
On linux, whether it's Chrome or Firefox, none of the videos play. Really
great experience but would love to see the videos. When I get home, I'll have
to pop open my Mac to get the full experience.

~~~
typpo
I had this issue but noticed it's because the Ghostery chrome extension blocks
Brightcove, where the videos are hosted. Maybe you have a similar problem?

~~~
scw
I also had this issue, in my case the culprit was the Kill-Flash extension.
Adding nytimes.com and brightcove.com to the whitelist made everything work.

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flurpitude
All I saw was a white screen. Turned out to be Ghostery blocking some content.
Ghostery, you have a twisted sense of humour.

~~~
yaddayadda
Thank you. I tried to figure out which one, but in the end just enabled
everything.

------
infinityetc
I first read the entire story on the mobile app, not even knowing that it was
part of a larger presentation. The writing itself is very compelling, but the
format on the full site adds so much.

Tracking the people through the thumbnail images and seeing the different
parts of the mountain matched up to the images the story had produced in my
head.

It's a testament to the content and the medium that they chose.

------
jameszol
What a stunning tribute to the story.

Every part of this was precisely, beautifully and expertly planned to have a
profound emotional pull to see the story through to the end. It worked. While
I was reading, I felt the emotion from the words + the animations + video +
audio.

I love the format, design and style. Simply brilliant.

------
mrb
Sigh, Flash crashed on me (Chrome 23, Windows 7 64-bit)... I bet doing this in
HTML5 would be more reliable.

Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the
following paragraph:

 _"To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain
trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and
confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally."_

How saddening. They worked hard to make it HTML5 compliant, but the user
experience for some is ruined by this ad crashing everything...

~~~
untog
All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me. The mountain-top diagram isn't
Flash, either.

~~~
masklinn
> All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me.

Not the case here, the "big" ones are <video> tags but the smaller videos
embedded from linked from the text is flash (and that's apparently sufficient
to make everything crawl to a halt, Chrome barely shows up in top but the
flash process maxes out a core)

------
awinterman
Can we take a moment to note what a terrible piece of journalism this is? It's
written like a short story. I read half way though and still don't know who
lived, who died, or when it happened.

~~~
garretruh
It's called a feature. If you want your news quick and easy, read Google News
headlines.

------
picklefish
What if the future of grade school textbooks was this. Learning would be
fascinating. What a great design.

~~~
davidw
> Learning would be fascinating.

I thought it was already, for many subjects.

~~~
lmm
It is, but somehow schools still manage to make it not so.

------
Swizec
Can I just say I really really love this new design? It's wonderful.

------
Zaheer
Impressed by this feature! I think this is a glimpse at how newspapers can
become a lot more relevant/adapt to an online medium. Right now most news
sites don't nearly take advantage of presenting a story online.

------
grogenaut
Not to speak ill of the dead but I don't know WTF these people were thinking.
I was skiing at Crystal (~80 miles away) the same day. IIRC we had about
14-16" of freshies that day. It was GORGEOUS in bounds, why go out? I had
checked the avalanche data for a side project that day and it was as bad as
you can get. And they were skiing in a known serious avalanche hazard zone.
Just showing off to out of town bigwigs IMHO. Someone died at Alpental (in the
backcountry area), one pass over, that day as well when a slide pushed him off
of a cliff.

------
allenwlee
Interesting to note that all the snowboarders refused to join the crowd and
opted to go their own way. Erin the liftie, who actually took off skiers right
on her own; tall Tim, who took off alone hard left; and pankey and Carlson who
followed tall Tim and ultimately discovered the bodies. Snowboarders are
stereotypically not crowd followers, and that characteristic might have saved
them here.

------
JoeAltmaier
Pretty snow pictures not impressing me. Annoyed at the interruption of the
storey flow. Never watch irrelevant videos anyway - hate podcasts with a
passion - information density around zero.

So not for everybody. From the comments here, you'd think its gods gift to
journalism.

Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my
browse context so I resent it for that too.

~~~
viraptor
> Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my
> browse context so I resent it for that too.

Right-/long-click your back button (depending on your browser) to get the
local history. Then choose one page before NYT.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cool!

But I wonder why reasonable people would ever write a page to hijack 'Back'.
Annoys me every time.

------
kerno
What am I missing here?

It looks visually great, but aren't we basically looking at text with embedded
videos? On Twitter the buzz about this made me this was a brand new way of
presenting articles - you know what it reminds me of most? A book.

~~~
pyre
This comes across as comparing poor journalism to good journalism and
complaining that you it's all 'just words,' so what's the 'big deal?'

~~~
kerno
Let me try again - the buzz on twitter I referred to was focussed on how this
design represented a bold new way of presenting journalism to an audience.

My point is; to characterise presenting an article in this interface as
revolutionary strikes me as incorrect - it instead harks back to a format that
we're all familiar with and which works very well. Which, as I wrote, is the
book.

The quality of the journalism doesn't come into it; I'm sure it's very good.

------
EdwardBeckett
The initial impression is breathtaking - captivating and provocative. Love it.

------
jrogers65
Page loaded, saw the article text briefly. Then the JS loaded and all that
remained was the header. Fancy web effects are all well and good but not so
much when they prevent you from viewing the content.

------
andybak
First thought: That's really beautiful

Second thought: My fan's gone mad. Glad I'm on AC...

------
stevewilhelm
I am surprised this article presents itself best in a browser on my
desktop/laptop, then in a browser on my iPad, and has the least interesting
presentation in the native NYT iPad App.

------
Corrado
This kind of "article" is probably why the NYT paywall is actually working. A
"newspaper" filled with these types of stories would actually be worth paying
for.

------
bjhoops1
Wow. This should come with a warning that you are likely to spend the next
hour and a half engrossed and saddened by this story.

------
chewxy
whilst beautiful, I couldn't stay focused on the story long enough to read it
all. So I tried my back button. Oops, I went to the top of the page. Back
button again.. nope, still on the page.

New York Times, stop hijacking my back button

------
intended
Really great job on the format. Well written.

All of which goes to naught when flash BSODs W7 on page 6.

The heck?

------
bmuon
The NYTimes guys are doing some really really good HTML work!

------
epa
Very nice web design on this page.. great.

------
irollboozers
Is this the future of newspapers?

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moronic_shit
dude.

------
gregcohn
this is amazing.

~~~
gregcohn
can anyone explain to me why this comment would be downvoted?

~~~
chrismorgan
I imagine it would be because the comment is not perceived to add any value at
all and is merely consuming space.

------
sixQuarks
Beautiful!

