Dave Boon’s Honda Accord tumbled violently down the mountainside below U.S. 40, then spun to a stop in a stand of trees.
All Boon could see was darkness, and all he could hear was the sound of snow pouring in through broken windows.
The car was flipped upside down, 150 feet below the roadway, buried in an avalanche. Those inside – Boon, 54; his wife, June, 52; and Gary Martinez, 13, the son of friends – were disoriented, scared.
Dave Boon asked if everyone was OK.
“Make air space,” June said, recalling advice from avalanche training courses the couple, avid backcountry skiers, took once.
Dave Boon started digging at the snow outside his window.
“When we were tumbling, lights were out. It was snow and darkness,” he said. “I had no idea how deep we were buried.”
Boon jabbed his hand at the incoming snow, pushed forward and saw daylight.
No one shoved off the highway by the avalanche on Berthoud Pass on Saturday was critically hurt – not the Boons nor Martinez, not the five members of an Iowa church group riding in a minivan. Peter Olsen, a 19-year-old member of the church group who was the most seriously wounded, with a broken rib, a gashed hand and other injuries, was released from a hospital Sunday and headed home to Iowa with other group members.
But the avalanche continued to rumble Sunday in the lives of those swept up in it.
For the Colorado Department of Transportation, Sunday was a day of renewed purpose. Crews intentionally triggered small avalanches on Loveland Pass to guard against another major avalanche. Saturday afternoon, CDOT crews fired six artillery rounds into the slopes above Berthoud Pass to mitigate avalanche danger there before clearing and reopening the road.
“Our forecasters and crews were devastated that a slide of this magnitude came down,” CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said. “They certainly have a heightened awareness and don’t want to see something like this happen again.”
With winds along the upper reaches of the Front Range gusting above hurricane-force strength, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center on Sunday elevated the avalanche danger in some areas to high.
“The danger has actually gone up,” the center’s Spencer Logan said.
Anyone treading out onto a steep north-, east- or south-facing slope in the backcountry was likely to trigger an avalanche, Logan said. However, he said that because of CDOT’s work, it was unlikely there would be another avalanche sweeping across a highway.
“Hopefully, this will increase the awareness of anyone heading into the backcountry,” Logan said.
For the Iowa church group, Sunday was a day to give thanks, say a prayer and perhaps grin a little bit at the tragedy they escaped. At a morning service at Foothills Bible Church in Littleton – where the Iowa church group members spent the night and where Foothills church members chipped in with sleeping bags, air mattresses and pillows to help their guests rest easier – the avalanche survivors spoke about their ordeal and thanked the church for its hospitality.
Olsen is an Iowa State University student and one of several Oakwood Road Church members who were wrapping up a multiday ski trip when the slide hit. When he arrived at Foothills Bible Church early Sunday afternoon, he wore a blue Colorado Avalanche T-shirt, a gift from a great-uncle who visited him in the hospital.
“I kind of got a kick out of that,” he said.
But Olsen said quietly he was still too shaken to talk about the accident, eager to get home and unsure whether he wanted to return to Colorado any time soon.
“Maybe,” he said, “but I don’t know how I’ll feel about that pass.”
Sean Huston, a church group member who was in a van the slide just missed, said it was only by the grace of God that more people weren’t caught in the avalanche and that those who were weren’t more seriously hurt. The van that went over the edge, Huston said, was the only one in the church group’s four-vehicle caravan with side curtain air bags.
But Saturday, when the cloud of snow surrounding the avalanche settled, and Huston and others in his van were able to see a mound as high as 20 feet before them, they feared the worst for their friends in the van that had been just 100 feet ahead.
“All we did was worry about them,” he said. “We found out they were OK, and we thanked God for that.”
For Dave Boon, Sunday was a day of unsettled rest.
At one point Sunday morning, Boon said, he pulled a piece of glass from his ear. At another point, he said he started to drive himself to the hospital because of pain in his rib cage. Then he felt a “pop,” the pain subsided, and he turned around.
He awoke at 1 a.m. Sunday and started replaying the events of the previous day over in his mind.
In a telephone interview Sunday from his Fort Collins home, Boon said he, June and Martinez were driving up Berthoud Pass at about 10:30 Saturday morning after a quick pit stop in Idaho Springs, heading for a cabin he and June own in Winter Park.
When they rounded the curve near the Henderson Mine, Boon said, he was relieved to see open road in front of him after being caught in heavy traffic.
“We were doing 40 to 45 mph, and all of the sudden we saw a puff (of snow) on the left – it was more of a blast – and it kind of pushed the car into the guardrail,” he said. “And then, it was like a freight train hit us.”
The avalanche launched the Honda over the guardrail and rolled it “3 1/2 or 4 1/2 times,” Boon said.
Down the slope, after digging for about 5 minutes to free himself, Boon saw the magnitude of the slide. Only the Honda’s wheels and undercarriage were visible above the snow, he said.
Officials said the slide was 150 feet wide, spread over 2,200 vertical feet and rated a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Boon crawled back into the Honda and helped Martinez out of the car, but June was trapped by her seat belt.
Boon dug snow from around his wife’s face, then screamed to witnesses who had stopped on the highway for someone to bring him a knife. Once he cut the seat belt, he dug June free from the snow and pulled her through the driver’s side window.
“It’s just remarkable to walk away,” Boon said. “As we were walking out, people were trying to take care of us … but we were like, ‘No, go get that other car.”‘
Search-and-rescue personnel, conducting an avalanche rescue training nearby, helped search for survivors and get everybody to safety. But the two cars involved in the slide were still stuck on the slope Sunday, along with keys, cellphones, wallets, eyeglasses and other items the slide victims lost. Stegman said she didn’t know when the vehicles would be retrieved.
“We were extremely lucky,” June Boon said. “We’re living, right?”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
15
Feet of snow depth left in the wake of an avalanche Saturday near Berthoud Pass
2,200
Vertical feet traveled by the slide that covered about 150 feet of U.S. 40
60
Speed, in mph, of wind gusts near Berthoud Pass that helped trigger the avalanche
