Fatality from falling in spruce traps

[buddy]

good heads up

I've fallen into a few spruce traps over the years, the worst on Isolation and the east side of East Dix, always while bushwhacking, and although they have been difficult to extract myself from it never crossed my mind that I would not be able to get out. I rarely hike alone in winter but after reading these posts I will be more reluctant to do so, especially early in the winter before the snow consolidates. I've always managed to swim out sideways with lots of effort and once I badly damage my snowshoe which presented a another set of problems. Clearly, the potential is there to get truly trapped without help to get out. Food for thought, to be consumed now not in the future from the bottom of a spruce trap. Buddy

 

[timmus]

Granted, more likely would be falling feet first with snowshoes on and having them entangled in the branches. Exhaustion ensues as you flounder about leading to hypothermia over time.

But before hypothermia there's a lot of stages :

1) laugh
2) curse
3) scream
4) more cursing
5) cry (once, on Calamity-true story)
6) back to normal breathing
7) get out of it.

 

[RoySwkr]

What's the proper technique again for getting oneself out of a hole?

If your snowshoe is hooked on branches, decide whether to get it off branches or off foot

If it looks like it will take awhile to get out, remove pack

Try to climb back to snow surface like you would get up a steep spot on trail, may require building "ramp"

In one case I heard of with 6' deep hole, move next to tree and climb tree branches

 

[The Hikers]

The only GOOD thing about spruce is that it is strong enough so it MAY hold you as you grab it on your way over the cliff.

 

[TMax]

I've had quite a few spructrap episodes. Once on Gray (in the ADK's) I fell in chest high. Decided to turn back when I had the vision of folks finding my body 10 feet up in a tree when they came through in Spring. That same day I went in over my head on Skylight. Luckily the branches of the tree were such that I was able to climb up and managed not to hook a snowshoe. But without a doubt, the scariest time was on Mt. Hood. I fell into a hole and held on with my arms, my feet never touched anything solid. I thought at first it was a crevasse and started hollering for Guinness (the hiker, not the beer) who threw himself down prone, reached over and grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me up and out. When we got our bearings back we peaked into the hole and it was just a huge spruce trap, you could see all the tree material down in there! I still hike solo in winter, I'm just very vigilant to conditions.

 

[Nutsosa]

Just out of curiosity, I did a google image search for "spruce trap." There seems to be a few VFTTers that made the first page of hits

 

[RoySwkr]

tree wells

I was snowshoeing near Hopkinton NH on Saturday and saw that every tree over a few inches in diameter had a tree well. I don't know if it is the sun heating the trunk or rain running down the trunk that melts the snow, but there was definitely a ring of bare ground around each tree.

This might be a good time for those interested to study the phenomenon. Even if you fall in head first you can probably get out as the snow was less than a foot deep.

 

[Jay H]

I'll bring a diving board, and the first person to do a triple backflip-header-into-spruce-trap gets a gold medal...

Jay

 

[prino]

I'm sure Pete must have a Spruce beer trap story....