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Sunrise on the last day of 2009 in Summit County, Colorado.

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Blowing snow and a mid-sized soft slab avalanche in a closed area at Loveland Ski Area. PHOTO COURTESY DALE ATKINS/RECCO AB.

Speedy partner rescue the key to survival

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — One second, you’re on top of the world, floating blissfully through a foot of crystalline powder, but an instant later — just as long as it takes a 150-foot slab of snow to crack loose — all hell breaks loose.

Instead of dancing gracefully with the mountain, you’re suddenly in the icy arms of a much crueler mistress who aims to batter your body, snap your bones, plug your mouth and nose with snow, and finally trap you and crush you in an icy tomb. Just before the snow stops heaving, you lunge and swim and thrust your upper body toward daylight.

It’s not enough. Darkness and silence, except for the pulsing thunder of your heart. You’re lucky, because there’s small airspace in front of your mouth, but with every exhalation, it becomes more ice-like, blocking what little flow of air there might be under three feet of dense snow. Soon, it will be a mask of death.

You try to remember when you last practiced an avalanche rescue with your ski partner. Since you survived the initial slide, your chances of survival are nine in 10 if she finds you within 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, only about half the buried victims survive, after 45 minutes, only a quarter.

There’s no time to call for a search and rescue team, to wait for an avalanche dog or the Flight for Life chopper. Your life is in your partner’s hands. Is she fumbling with her beacon, trying to switch it to search mode with cold, numb fingers?

Can she put together a probe without breaking it? Does she know how to do a fine search, down to the last square meter, or will she have to waste precious time probing a larger area? Is she physically able to shovel 1.5 tons of snow to free you (the average amount of snow above a victim, with an average burial depth of about three feet)?

Every second is critical — literally a matter of life and death.

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Crosscountry ski tracks on Dillon Reservoir in Summit County, Colorado.

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See a complete photoblog of the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships by clicking this link.

In Chorus.

An old jalopy in the historic park in Frisco, Colorado in the snows of January.

Haven’t had time to do much with 1 World Images, but I haven’t forgotten … someday!

Just because we love it.

Haven’t had much time to post here at 1 world images, but please check out my new community news project, the Summit County Voice.

Colorado SPJ board seeks clarity on Summit Daily newsroom policies following firing of reporter

The SPJ Colorado Pro board decided via email following a discussion at December’s regular board meeting to send a letter to Summit Daily News Publisher Jim Morgan after he fired reporter and SPJ member Bob Berwyn. Below is a copy the letter.

Jim Morgan, Publisher
Summit Daily News

Dear Mr. Morgan,

As board members of the Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado Pro Chapter, we are writing to you to express concern over recent incidents involving the Summit Daily News and reporter Bob Berwyn, who is a member of SPJ.
We understand that there are always at least two sides to every story and it is not our interest in becoming involved in a personnel issue between the newspaper and its former reporter. However, the timing of the dismissal, occurring immediately after the CEO of the corporation that is one of the newspaper’s largest advertisers complained about one of Berwyn’s opinion columns, is certainly cause for concern.
As you know, perception is reality and frankly, the timing of Mr. Berwyn’s dismissal, coming on the heels of Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz’ complaint about Berwyn’s column, stinks. Warranted or not, it sends the message — to the community, to your advertisers and to the rest of your newspaper staff — that an advertiser has the ability to effectively control, including quashing, the editorial voice of the newspaper.
To make matters worse, it is our understanding that this firing occurred just a month before Mr. Berwyn was to travel to Vancouver to cover the Olympics. This raises the obvious question: Why would this high-profile assignment be handed to an employee with ongoing performance and trust problems?
It is disappointing that in your publisher’s note responding to Susan Greene’s critical Denver Post column on this topic, you did not specifically address the challenges of resisting the pressure of advertisers who try to influence coverage at the Summit Daily News. Nor did you detail any policies that guide editorial integrity in your newsroom. In response, we request that you clarify your newspaper’s ethics policy, including whether the Summit Daily News adheres to the tenets of the Society of Professional Journalist’s ethics policy, a copy of which is attached.
We are happy to meet with you to further discuss this situation, and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Noelle Leavitt, Cara DeGette, John Ensslin, Christine McManus, Caroline Kipp, Leticia Steffen, Sandra Fish, Don Knox, Barbara Ford, Holly Wolcott, Sara Crocker, Robert Boczkiewicz The Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado Pro Chapter

A maze of floes drifting in the turquoise waters of the Antarctic Sound.

This is part three of a series about a voyage from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the 52-passenger M/V Professor Molchanov. Click here for Part 1:Beagle beer and friendly huskies in Ushuaia, and here for Part 2: The Drake Passage and Antarctic convergence.

South of the convergence zone, the sea is still. The ship slows to maneuver between giant ice floes and we awaken to a magical world of icebergs tinged lipstick-pink and tangerine-orange by a spectacular Antarctic sunrise. Only a few passengers are awake and perched on the bow of the Molchanov to watch a group of penguins arch through the water like mini-dolphins. They’re powerful swimmers, using their wings to propel themselves under water with flying motions.

“They’re trying to fly,” says  expedition leader Jan Belgers. Even though the birds gave up the sky for the deep sea eons ago, they still have some genetic memory of what it must be like to soar through the air, Belgers explains.

A small pod of orcas cruises the still waters of the Antarctic Sound.

Later, we spot a pod of orcas cruising between the fantastically sculpted bergs. Leopard seals lounge on flat floes, looking fat and happy after feasting on this year’s crop of penguin chicks.

Paulet Island

Our first landing in Antarctica is on Paulet Island, a small circular chunk of volcanic rock that’s home to a major adelie penguin colony during the Austral spring and early summer. In early March (late summer in the southern hemisphere) the penguins are mostly gone but the remains of their rookery, in the form of pungent pink guano, was still evident. The acrid smell wafts across the water as we approach the shore in Zodiacs and getting across the beach to the uplands involved a hike through the smelly turf.

A trio of guides from the M/V Professor Molchanov stand on the guano-covered shoreline of Paulet Island, watching as a Zodiac speeds back to the ship. Our plan to hike to the seldom-visited summit of the island was foiled as some weather moved in. Captain Parfenyuk called the guides and ordered the passengers to return. He was concerned that the Molchanov could get stuck among the giant bergs.

A few straggling adelies remained, along with dozens of fur seals lounging on ice floes and along the beach, along with a group of blue-eyed shags, the only members of the cormorant family to venture to Antarctica proper.

We hiked to the remains of a stone hut that served as shelter for Captain Carl Anton Larsen and the crew of his ship, the Antarctic. Larsen, a whaler, was exploring the region in 1903 when his ship was trapped and crushed in the ice offshore, leading to one of the many epic stories of polar survival. Part of Larsen’s party traveled over the ice by sledge seeking rescue. Eventually, all the men but one were rescued by an Argentine vessel. A simple wooden cross set back from the beach marks the grave of Ole Kristian Wennersgaard, a 22-year-old sailor who died on the island in pursuit of science and exploration.

Dundee Island

Although more and more people are visiting Antarctica these days (up to 40,000 annually), it’s still a remote tourism location compared to other hot spots on the global travel circuit. Our second stop is at  Petrel Cove along the shore of Dundee Island. It’s part of a group of islands known collectively as Graham Land, closer to South America than any other part of Antarctica. It was named by Scottish whalers in 1893 and served as the take-off point for American pilot Lincoln Ellsworth when he made the first trans-Antarctic flight in 1935.

When we got back to Summit County, I did some research on Petrel Cove to try and find out how many people have been there. A list maintained by a group that monitors environmental impacts shows that, during the past 15 years, only two commercial trips with a total of 107 visitors have landed at the remote site.

A few metal buildings, painted rust-red, are left over from an Argentinian settlement. Although it was supposedly a science station, our expedition leaders dismissively calls it a political site, established to help the South American country bolster territorial claims in Antarctica.

Under existing international law, the continent belongs to nobody and is managed for the purposes of scientific research through a consultative process. Still, several countries, including the United States, maintain that they have the right to exercise those claims in the future. With potential for vast reserves of precious resources, including offshore oil and gas, some observers think it’s only a matter of time before some countries try to assert some level of sovereignty.

A curious fur seal sniffs the air as several dozen passengers from the M/V Professor Molchanov wander past on the rocky beach of Dundee Island.

Hundreds of fur seals, along with a few Weddell seals, lounge on a broad beach covered with red seaweed. Clumps of miniature icebergs melt in the warm days of late summer. A large glacier on the island appears to be in retreat, crumbling at our feet. It feels like just a few days since the last ice age ended.