Six Soldiers Caught in Avalanche on Smuggler's Notch

On March 14th, 2018 at Smugglers Notch, the Army Mountain Warfare School was going through the “Advanced Mountain Warfare Course.” The Advanced Warfare Course trains soldiers for mountain warfare and they have a course for winter survival skills.

Around 1 p.m during their training, students and instructors were swept about 300 meters by an avalanche.

In previous winter course training sessions, soldiers are taught how to swim in an avalanche and how to get themselves out if they are buried by an avalanche. While they had some training, in this case the soldiers were swept, not buried. There were six soldiers in total who got swept by the avalanche.

Only five of the soldiers were transported to local emergency services and UVM medical center. The sixth soldier returned to duty due to only having mild injuries. All the people who were injured were conscious and coherent. It took about 10 minutes for everyone to be located and it took about an hour and forty minutes to transport the soldiers who needed to be transported to the hospital.