JP Auclair and Andreas Fransson Killed in Avalanche

It is rare these days for news not to arrive on a screen of some sort. Earlier today it was delivered to me via text, containing only a name and a sad face. The message could not have been more clear, but it didn’t lack poignancy either.

I didn’t know JP Auclair, but this one hit hard anyway.

Maybe my guard is down a bit. After watching Red Bull Rampage yesterday, which happened again without serious injury (or worse), it was nice to know that the young chargers who put it all on the line were going home with bodies and careers intact. On the same day the MTB world was focused on the spectacle in Virgin, Utah, JP Auclair and Andreas Fransson were caught in an avalanche and killed while climbing Monte San Lorenzo in Chile for a project they called #apogeeskiing. Their location, near the Chilean/Argentinian border in the Patagonian icefields, was so remote that a rescue flight took 2 hours to arrive, and it was 13 hours before responders could get to the scene. Even then the news wasn’t confirmed until a flyover plane confirmed the sight of two bodies earlier today.

Auclair was a Québec-born skier who had lived in Whistler on and off over the years, and his death will be felt heavily there, as it will throughout the ski community and beyond. Originally a freestyle mogul skier and member of the New Canadian Air Force, he made his greatest mark skiing creative lines, notably urban ones. His most famous was laid down for the Sherpas’ breakout movie All.I.Can. JP Auclair is also a co-founder of Armada Skis. A close mutual friend paid him the ultimate compliment by likening him to Sarah Burke: “no one ever found a bad thing to say about him. He was the best human you could hope to know.” Many of us are sad not to have had the chance. For those that did know and love him, our sympathies are with you.

Andreas Fransson isn’t a name quite as well known outside the ski community, but the Swedish-born resident of Chamonix was an accomplished skier, instructor, climber, and guide with a philosophic bent. It’s easy to comfort ourselves in someone’s death that they were a ‘good person’ but a few moments spent reading his words prove that was the case with Fransson. Last year he wrote a beautiful and heartbreaking piece recounting the day his friend Magnus Kastengren fell and died when the two of them were attempting a first descent of the Caroline Face on Mt. Cook in New Zealand.

RIP, both of you. Maybe Rest In Powder is a better way to put it.

 

UPDATE: News has also filtered in that Tacoma-born AMGA-certified guide Liz Daley was killed on the same day in a separate avalanche while descending Cerro Vespignani, Argentina, near Mount Fitzroy, according to local outlet OPI Santa Cruz. She was a Washington state resident and sponsored by Eddie Bauer, who released the following statement:

We are deeply saddened to report that yesterday, an avalanche in the Fitz Roy Massif region outside of El Chaltén, Argentina, took the life of Liz Daley, a member of our Guide team.

Liz was on a ski mountaineering expedition with three other members of our snow sports team and two production crew members. The rest of the team is safe.

Liz was an accomplished splitboarder, alpine climber and mountain guide who was born and raised in Washington. She was a beloved member of our snow sports team and will be sorely missed by all those who knew her.

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It seems especially cruel to be losing skiers before the season even starts up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Stay safe out there and enjoy the little things as well as the big ones.