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Avalanche 'hit me like a rip tide' Buried by a wall of snow, Crater Lake ski patroller seeking a pair of lost skiers suddenly needed rescuing himself By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune Bill Bloom had already said his goodbyes. He barely had time to make an air pocket in front of his face before the avalanche buried him. He knew his oxygen was disappearing because he was losing consciousness. On his radio, he could hear people talking as they searched for him, but he couldn't tell them they were looking in the wrong place. Bloom was skiing familiar terrain at Crater Lake National Park Monday when he and three other cross-country skiers were swept away by a wave of tumbling snow. Bloom and his partner, park ranger Randy Benham of Grants Pass, were looking for a Portland couple who were two days overdue on a cross-country ski trip around Crater Lake. Two Klamath Falls skiers, Kris Fisher and Richard Ward, out for a day trip, joined the search. The two Portland skiers, Kate Gassford and Dave Schuller, were found late Wednesday near Vidae Falls, about three miles east of park headquarters - not so far from where the searchers were carried away two days earlier. Bloom shared his story from his home late Wednesday. Bloom, 53, was skiing through country he knew well when the avalanche let go. A resident of Sprague River and a member of the Crater Lake Ski Patrol, he had skied the East Rim Drive hundreds of times. Bloom was in the lead as they skied single file, looking for the overdue skiers. Storms had dumped three feet of snow over the past few days. The searchers had reached the trailhead to Crater Peak when Bloom heard Benham cry out and looked up to see a wall of snow rushing toward him. "It made very little noise, but it hit me like a rip tide," he said. He barely had time to bring his hands in front of his face to make a little air pocket before the snow buried him and everything went quiet. "I could see light in front of me," he said. "I thought maybe I was down maybe a foot or a foot and a half." He thought to dig himself free, but he couldn't move his hands. His wrists were attached to the straps of his ski poles. The poles were stuck in the snow. "I couldn't get my hands out of the straps," he said. "I couldn't move. I was trapped there looking at the light. My heart was hammerin', and I was hyperventilating. I knew I had to slow down and conserve oxygen. I was talking to myself, but I wasn't listening." Soon he heard Benham's familiar voice on his Park Service radio. "Thank God," Bloom recalled thinking, "Somebody got out." He couldn't know that Benham and the others had been swept downhill from the road they had been following. When the snow stopped moving, Benham and Ward were partially buried, but able to free themselves. They saw one set of ski tips, hurriedly dug out Fisher, and started looking for Bloom. Benham and Bloom were both wearing "avalanche beacons," radio transmitters that emit a continuous signal for searchers to locate buried victims. As he had done in so many drills, Benham switched his beacon from "send" to "receive" and started looking for signals that would lead him to his friend. Bloom could hear Benham cussing him for not turning on his avalanche beacon, but Bloom's beacon was on. Benham's receiver couldn't locate Bloom because Benham was looking for Bloom where the snow had carried the others. Bloom heard Benham say, "He's not here. He's somewhere between here and the road." By this time perhaps 20 minutes had passed. Bloom began to wander in and out of consciousness as his oxygen supply diminished and his body began to chill. "If you've got to go," he said, "hypothermia and too much CO-2 isn't bad. You lose consciousness and fall asleep." Benham, Fisher and Ward worked quickly up the hill, poking the snow with ski poles and Benham's long, slender avalanche probe, trying to strike Bloom's body under in the snow. As Bloom was drifting off, he felt something like a poke. Then he felt another poke, this time in the elbow, hard enough to register pain. "I do believe in a higher power," he said, "and I said, 'Dear God, let that probe come down one more time.' " A probe came down again, right in front of his hand. "I grabbed it, and said I'm not letting go till they dig me out." Benham, Fisher and Ward dug down six feet to reach him. Benham fed him warm liquids to rewarm his body, and he skied out under his own power. He drive himself to a Klamath Falls hospital and spent the night, but suffered no major injuries. He credited luck and Benham's experience in mountain rescue skills, for saving his life and Fisher's. "If Randy hadn't been there and been spit out, at least two of us would have been toast." Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.