Vol.79 English version Close call of a backcountry ski trip

This story was written by Kazuki Kaneiwa, at the end of the last winter as a recap of the season.

As a new dad, balancing time spent at home with family and away in the mountains would be one of the significantly important skills to master.  Especially if you are an avid skier, a little bit of patience during summer times lets you have more freedom to chase for great skiing experiences.

While keeping this as a basic strategy, I managed to make 24 skiing trips last season.

Anyhow, when I look back last season, I realized that the ratio of trips that had close calls was relatively higher. According to the Heinrich's Law  "In a workplace, for every accident that causes a major injury, there are 29 accidents that cause minor injuries and 300 accidents that cause no injuries" Since this number was calculated based on the incidences of injuries at a factory with the use of statistical analysis, we can't just easily apply the results to the mountain related accidents. However, I assume that causing multiple close calls and not addressing root causes would lead to major ones as well.


Therefore, in this blog, I would like to analyze my own close call experiences as an accident preventative strategy for future. I hope this info would help you get mentally ready for the safe and amazing snow season.

A view of Mt.Goryu from Toomi Mountain Ridge  

Getting lost at Toomi Ridge in winter

In here, I would like to clarify that being lost (getting lost) in this context as "not knowing where you are" Of course, there are no apparent paths in the snowy mountains. If there were no traces of others, your traces would become a path. Rather than following summer trails during winter time, it is more appropriate to find a path based on other factors like avalanche risks, a formation of snow cornice, to name a few.

What special about winter mountains is that you have more freedom to explore and at the same time your own judgements are more likely to affect results. This gives us surreal sharp sensations toward life and this is what makes all experience become special.

Heading to Mt Shiratake 

Toomi Ridge is very popular route during snow season so I won't mention in details. Basically, it is simpler ridge and as long as the weather permits, you won't be at lost....Well, at least that's my opinion about the route. Yet, once the weather changed, I went into one of the branches of the main ridge and then became a state of not knowing where I was.

2014 25th Jan, my partner and I went out for a backcountry skiing trip to Mt. Goryu. It was an overnight trip. The details include reaching at Nishitoomi area on Day 1 and ascending to Mt.Goryu then skiing down on Day 2.

Toomi Ridge consists of a route that connects multiple peaks like Mt. Kotoumi, Mt. Nakatoumi, Mt. Ootoumi, Mt. Nishitoomi to Mt.Shirotake. From there to Mt.Goryu it became the main ridge of Mt.Ushirotate

On Day1, we took a lift and left our camping equipment at Mt.Nishitoomi and heading up to Mt.Goryu. It was very icy near the peak so it took a while to come back to the base camp of Mt.Nishitoomi.

Snow cave in the next morning 

When we woke up the next day in a snow cave, half of the entrance was covered with new snow.
After removing some snow, we started getting ready for the day. However, since we've already reached the peak yesterday and what we had left to do today is just getting back, we took time to get ready and it was around 10am that we left the campsite.

 Based on the forecast, they said the weather started to pick up in the afternoon, but actually, it was an opposite case and from noon to evening, it was a blizzard. We didn't get any update of forecast while being in the mountains and we were solely planning our plans based on the info that we got right before heading into the mountains.

There was an option of skiing down Shiradakesawa,  because of the bad weather condition and not knowing much about the route we decided to take the same way back through Toomi Ridge.

With the combination of poor visibility and no trace being left from yesterday, we went off the right route and having climbed up through a steep route to be back to the correct one. On top of that, there was a small avalanche. These made us realize about our wrong perceptions toward the terrains that seemingly simple and popular routes can become very tricky once weather changes.

Ascending back up to the right route in a blizzard 

Also skiing down would be way faster than walking down so by the time when you realize that you are in a wrong spot, you have already descended quite a few elevation. Generally, as Toomi Ridge is a mellow terrain so you would notice your mistakes when you realized the change of the angle of the slopes. Yet by the time, the angle was too steep to going back up with ski on. So just walking back up with your winter boots took away so much energy and time.


After that, it seemed to be that we were back on a right track. Contrary to our momentary relief, we got lost again when we traversed Mt.Syoutoumi. Mt.Shyotoumi is a mellow peak and if you traverse on Northwest side, you can avoid change of elevation and leading to easy route with less elevation changes. Again, we realized that the terrain got steeper as we went, and to make the matters worse, the compass indicated that we were heading the right direction.

We assumed that poor visibility tricked our mind into thinking that we weren't the right route so we went on. When we compared the terrain to the map down below, the angles of slopes were obviously wrong. This confirmed that we were again being lost. Again... we went back up to the ridge.

Red X is the location we got lost 

We chose another route and skied down for about 200m yet this route was also so steep and we stopped and argued. I only remembered that I said that we were at definitely wrong spot and my partner still insisted on that still we were heading to the right direction. The argument didn't go anywhere.

Then finally I said "Okay, why don't we just go down here again, it's quite steep so naturally, the risk of avalanche would become higher, yet like you said the direction is right and theoretically we could get to Mt.Shira "

The idea was extremely dangerous and scary to look back. At the time, I was desperately wanting to get out of the situation and overconfident in my skills. Luckily, the visibility got a little better at the time and made us realize that we weren't definitely where we thought we were and decided to go back up again...
This final ascending was just absolute torture mentally and physically....After that, we finally found our way back.

The sign of a huge relief 

Lesson learned...

There are already some of my self-reflections written throughout this story and also I still believe there were mistakes that I am not aware of. As a conclusion, I would like to address two main lessons that I learned from this trip.

1,  Even obvious and simple ridge(terrain) in a good weather,the two factors of descending and poor visibility can make people easily at lost.

2, Psychological effects on poor decision-making processes

This is not a strategy for prevention of getting lost in the mountains, recently I made my own rule of not going above a tree line on a day with poor visibility(weather). This is because if there are no trees, it increases the risks of getting lost and if the purpose was skiing, without lights we can't quite enjoy skiing down.  At a lower elevation, the avalanche risk would be lower and still enjoy skiing in a bad weather. Also always carry GPS with me and check locations often.

My very first encounter with a wild ptarmigan 

From a psychological aspect, personality and age would influence on a decision making process. In general, I would assume the Normalcy Bias which "Ignore unfavorable information to themselves and underestimate the seriousness of the situation and believe that things are going to be fine" was present at the time. The thing is that even though this is a psychological effect, the physical exhaustion was also linked to a poor decision-making process.


Finally, this trip didn't end up with serious results and we made our way back just by ourselves safely. However, there were many big incidents that killed people's lives similar situations and our trip could have ended worse. What I wanted to say here was importance of analyzing the close calls to prevent people face any unwanted situation in the mountains.

Hope this story helped people gearing up for the winter, be aware of the risks and I hope each reader fully enjoy the beautiful mountains and experiences!! 

                                                                                Translated by Yumiko Mori