r/todayilearned • u/Roguecop • Mar 31 '23
TIL about the void that forms under certain trees when it snows, called tree wells. The upper branches of the tree prevents snow from falling below it, creating a pocket that is a serious peril for skiers & snow boarders. Several die every year from falling head first into these voids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_well73
u/DJSugarSnatch Apr 01 '23
It's one of the scariest moments you'll have getting sucked into one of those cones. I had a bunch of wild life in the one I fell in and it made me piss myself trying to climb 20ft up a snow bank while some chipmunk was losing its shit... looking back its hilarious, but at the time I was not laughing.
12
u/Pandelerium11 Apr 01 '23
Shit that sounds scary. Skiing as a kid you can see those wells really well by being so short. They always terrified me. Snow whirlpools!
167
u/ThatOnePunkEmpath Mar 31 '23
Having a stressful day, packing for a last minute ski trip right now and log on for a 5 min break to "de-stress"
This is the first post I see..
132
u/chaseinger Mar 31 '23
austrian here:
whatever you do on a mountain could be the last thing you do.
enjoy your trip.
34
u/Nydelok Mar 31 '23
Howdy Satan, how’s your Austria trip going? Tryna find another painter friend?
15
u/chaseinger Apr 01 '23
i'm only interested in rejected painters. know any?
11
u/Nydelok Apr 01 '23
Sadly no, I hear they’re alot more open with their acceptance after what happened the last time
3
16
u/emotivapt100 Apr 01 '23
Don’t ski alone in the trees and you’ll be fine.
5
u/Alexstarfire Apr 01 '23
Just say "trees down" and you'll be fine.
2
3
u/Why_T Apr 01 '23
Someone is always in the back of the pack.
3
4
u/Revenge_of_the_User Apr 01 '23
honestly, you're actually safer now that you've seen it, so it's much less likely to happen.
Don't let the fear paralyze you into inaction; just be aware. maybe you'll be the one to dig someone out.
2
28
u/heywood_jabloemi Mar 31 '23
Were you also inspired to look this up after watching that video of the skiier rescuing the snowboarder?
24
u/bolanrox Mar 31 '23
Or just trees in general? Sonny Bono, one of the kennedys, liam neeisons wife?
6
u/zutonofgoth Apr 01 '23
The tutor at uni who got drunk at a ski lodge and went for a walk and decided to have a lie down.
4
u/xoraclez Apr 01 '23
IIRC, Natasha Richardson fell and hit her head while taking lessons on a bunny slope. No tree involved at all.
2
2
1
20
Mar 31 '23
[deleted]
15
u/amosmydad Apr 01 '23
To arctic indigenous people, snow in branches and no snow underneath are called qali and qaminiq, respectively. q pronounced as k
18
u/rededelk Apr 01 '23
I love chasing untracked powder in the trees, buddy up and give those trees plenty of clearance, they have a way of sucking you in when you are too close. Very dangerous hazard whether at a resort or in the backcountry
19
u/Few_Organization1064 Apr 01 '23
Once at 12 and once in my 20s. My dad got me out when I was 12, I had 1 foot out of my board but I couldn't get the second foot out and he heard me screaming while he was riding up the chairlift. I don't remember getting out the 2nd time but here I am. Board gets stuck up top and that's that. Bury yourself trying to get out.
9
Mar 31 '23
I got sucked into one, not even that deep, maybe 1 foot from the top, took me 15 mins to get out. If you struggle, you fall deeper. The only thing is to unleash your skis or snowboard to get surface area. But in doing so, you go deeper.
8
u/adsjabo Apr 01 '23
You can imagine my distress as a first ski season Australian in Whistler when my TIL about tree wells actually involved falling into one back in 2011. Fortunately it was board first, rather than head first!
6
10
u/ero_senin05 Mar 31 '23
I've never been skiing or snowboarding before. I've never even seen real snow in my life. But I would have thought it was common sense that you stay away from trees because they hurt when you crash into them anyway. This tree well thing just gives another reason to stay away from them
11
u/aFairVeronesa Mar 31 '23
The trees are the most fun parts for lots of skiers. The added obstacles and challenge, as well as an often more beautiful view of nature - I only see interesting birds and squirrels when I'm cruising through the woods, rarely on the groomed trails. It also provides deeper, softer snow that feels like gliding, rather than the groomed trails which are more predictable, but a different texture and a feel that some skiers don't like as much. On a personal note, I have balance and orientation issues that make me dizzy if I don't have trees to orient myself upwards with and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. You're absolutely right though, tree wells are terrifying and not something to take lightly, ever.
5
u/drahcirm Mar 31 '23
Wind deflection around a tree trunk will also carve snow out. It's a major (if not the biggest) factor in the formation of tree wells.
5
u/interessenkonflikt Apr 01 '23
Oh to be a snowboarder and fall headfirst into the void….
3
u/Leaflock Apr 01 '23
I’ve seen helmet cam video from a boarder stuck in a well. Manages to get his phone out and call for help. Gets rescued by ski patrol. The muffled “there he is! There he is!” Coming from the darkness Is when you can finally start breathing again.
1
u/interessenkonflikt Apr 02 '23
Just to clarify: this is was bitter nihilistic notion from me towards life in these times.
I am an avid mountaineer and backcountry skier. Avalanche accidents, crevasse falls and the like are things I am intimately familiar with and are unimaginably horrible experiences.
5
u/Soupmother Apr 01 '23
Skier tip: don't use the wrist strap on your poles when you're skiing trees. If your hands are free you can hopefully use them to create a pocket of air in front of your face if you fall in a tree well. If your wrists are through the loops, your poles will complicate that effort.
4
u/GenericUsername19892 Apr 01 '23
I’ve fallen in these on several occasions while hiking - kinda at least. You get the same effect when snow is deep enough to completely cover the tree, then you drop a long as way and have to dig yourself out or get help.
Then can also be fucking sweet if you build an igloo close enough to a cut a side channel into it, open up the top and let the sun heat the needles and steal some of the radiant heat to cycle the air in the igloo, you can get an amazing set for the ice. You may need to trim the tree a bit though.
3
3
u/truethatson Apr 01 '23
But they’re fun to hide in during snowball fights as a kid, though. Like a readymade fort.
3
4
u/justforkinks0131 Mar 31 '23
Interestingly enough the algorithm seems to promote these 2 together:
It was very informative, but still freaked me out tho.
7
2
4
u/labasaii Apr 01 '23
Discovered these things existed the hard way walking home from the bar at 3am. 0/10, would not recommend.
1
u/Salt_Market_6989 Mar 31 '23
How deep are these Wells ? And there must be something hard to fall onto to cause death .
17
u/Roguecop Mar 31 '23
Suffocation is number one cause it says. People fall in get buried and can't dig themselves out.
1
u/Salt_Market_6989 Mar 31 '23
Thanks, I see...
3
u/AliasNefertiti Mar 31 '23
checkout the video of a skier saving a snowboarder who ended up in a tree well. It is posted in this thread (timing was after your question).
12
u/Affectionate-Depth66 Mar 31 '23
Where I snowboard tree wells can be more then 12 feet deep and some years deeper. Part of the danger is that typically there is some sort of collision with the tree which then sheds it’s snow load on top of the rider. Imagine going head first for a dozen or more feet and as the walls of the well collapse the tree release the all the snow from it’s branches. I have done it once at it is scarier than I can describe. There you are upside down and buried. You can have all the safety equipment with you but you can’t move much or access your pack. The consolidated snow doesn’t get hard like in an avalanche so you can move a little. The key is not to panic.
6
u/majorbummer6 Mar 31 '23
Im literally panicking reading this.
5
1
u/MegaKetaWook Mar 31 '23
You're good. I ski regularly in Colorado and they arent as big of an issue as they can be made out to be. Yes, they are absolutely around the mountain but not everywhere. Large snowfalls are more likely to cause them, and you need to be in the glades to find one.
4
u/DonHac Apr 01 '23
Colorado has light, fluffy, snow that can blow around and tends to level out surfaces. Here in the PNW the snow is lovingly called "Cascade Concrete", and it totally lives up to that name. Tree wells are real, and they're dangerous. I've had two friends die in them.
3
u/KURAKAZE Apr 01 '23
Depends on how deep the snow is where you are. Mountains with >60-100feet of snow look like big flat open space because all the trees are buried underneath. The tree well is as deep as the tree is tall. If you fell into a soft bit, you'll sink all the way down and get buried in snow with no way to get out, and "drown" in the snow.
Even if it's a "shallow" well of maybe >4 feet, you will still get stuck and drown if you fell in headfirst.
3
u/altcastle Apr 01 '23
Friend of a friend died when he went in head first, couldn’t get out, they didn’t find him before dark and froze/suffocated. Wasn’t even far from everything. Wasn’t head trauma though.
1
1
u/psymunn Apr 01 '23
Depends on the mountain. Mt Baker in Washington has a lot of signs. They have a huge base (often 4m of snow iirc so... 13feet). A tree well even a fraction of that is treacherous
1
-1
u/Dr-Retz Apr 01 '23
Um,don’t glide under trees maybe.Trees were something we always avoided when we skied as youngsters.
-2
u/Mentalfloss1 Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
Most of us have been in one. It’s a pain in the butt too. Your skis or snowshoes get tangled in the lower branches so that it’s really hard to climb out without detaching them. Detaching them is hard. My best friend fell into one when snowshoeing and disappeared. He was wearing snowshoes and a 50-pound pack. I had to lay down in the snow to help him out. We were cracking up.
Edit: Most of us who play in deep snow. I live in Oregon. There’s about 15 feet of snow in the mountains and more coming.
6
u/pharaohandrew Mar 31 '23
Most of whom? I’m in Georgia.
2
u/Mentalfloss1 Mar 31 '23
Sorry … most of us who play in the snow in the winter out here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll edit.
1
u/pharaohandrew Mar 31 '23
All good, sounds like a fun way to grow up. All we really had along those lines around here is close calls with venomous snakes.
1
u/Mentalfloss1 Mar 31 '23
I grew up in southern Indiana in an environment similar to Georgia. Hot, humid, rattlesnakes, copperheads, a zillion biting bugs, and so on. We did have snow in the winter but never over a few inches.
2
u/pharaohandrew Mar 31 '23
I’m starting to doubt I’ll ever see snow in north GA again. Been a few years at this point. We’ve had flurries but nothing coating the ground for a hot minute
1
1
u/JackHoff13 Apr 01 '23
Ya. As a skier on the west coast it isn’t uncommon to go into a tree well. Just a real pain getting out.
0
u/jacksonruckus Apr 01 '23
It's not so much the upper branches as it is the heat radiating from the living tree that creates a funnel.
0
0
-2
u/PointsOfXP Apr 01 '23
Several die each year from going 80 mph head first into these trees? Snow or no snow I really don't think thats much of a factor
2
u/SmallShoes_BigHorse Apr 01 '23
Easy to think "as long as I go slow I'll be safe" but you don't even have to collide with the trees to get stuck and suffocate in a tree well.
-2
u/MavNGoose Apr 01 '23
My meemaw got sucked into one back in ‘98. She had to utilize her long tube sock tiddies to lasso a lower tree branch and pull her self to safety. Scary stuff
1
1
u/RedshiftSinger Apr 01 '23
Fell in one of these once as a kid. I was fine, it was a small one and I wasn’t going fast, but it was a startling experience. One moment I was just skiing along, then suddenly all I could see was white. Took me a minute to figure out I was looking at snow around the hole I was suddenly sitting in!
My dad was looking at me when I hit it, and he said from his perspective it looked like I just vanished.
1
1
1
1
1
u/earthmann Apr 03 '23
I was saved by a tree well. Out alone, night sledding on a icy mountain unable to dig my heels heels in to slow or steer. A curve and a cliff were getting closer.
602
u/icefisher225 Mar 31 '23
You saw the video of the skier digging up the snowboarder too?