16 ms·

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

525 points by tysone 14y ago

scott_s 14y ago
The best long-form presentation of an article or essay I have ever seen on the internet.
- nemo1618 14y ago
  Agreed. This article, more than anything else I've seen, convinced me that this is the future of news. Newspapers seem ridiculously outdated by comparison.
- subsystem 14y ago
  It's great, but I can't help to get flashbacks to the mid '90s multimedia era. If someone would have shown me this as the future cutting edge back then, I probably would have been disappointed.
  - codewright 14y ago
    Taste matters. 90s multimedia rarely had it.
    - subsystem 14y ago
      I think most of the encyclopedia CDs, like Microsoft Encarta, were quite tasteful. At least for their time. A blast from the past: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4ptApL-k4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4ptApL-k4
  - c1sc0 14y ago
    Had the same feeling. Made me think of a 1997-ish flash-laden special about a Mount Everest ascent some sports channel did. Technically pretty-much the same (integration of text + video + audio + animation), just using HTML instead of Flash. The difference is in the storytelling. This stuff only works if the story is front & central and the gimmicks augment the story.
picklefish 14y ago
What if the future of grade school textbooks was this. Learning would be fascinating. What a great design.
- pjmo 14y ago
  That is a great point. It would almost be fun to learn in this type of way.
- davidw 14y ago
  > Learning would be fascinating. I thought it was already, for many subjects.
  - lmm 14y ago
    It is, but somehow schools still manage to make it not so.
- _delirium 14y ago
  I remember a lot of multimedia learning materials in the late '80s and 1990s. Some were good, some weren't, but I don't feel they really improved my education much. The only ones that really stuck with me were more simulation-type ones, not as much these multimedia-text ones. I do recall learning a lot about oil drilling from an oil-drilling simulation game.
- thwest 14y ago
  Encarta 95 was really great. Really set the tone for my decade later wikipedia browsing habit.
Zaheer 14y ago
Impressed by this feature! I think this is a glimpse at how newspapers can become a lot more relevant/adapt to an online medium. Right now most news sites don't nearly take advantage of presenting a story online.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - pan69 14y ago
    "why would I pay for news when I can get it for free" Why do people buy Time magazine or National Geographic? There is a big difference between "news" and better/well researched background articles. There are whole brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to selling magazines like this. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to transfer this to the web, or has it has become quite popular lately, a tablet of some sort.
  - cardamomo 14y ago
    Is it a safe assumption, though, that in the future writers will have the tools needed to more easily and cheaply present their stories in this manner? We are already seeing tools such as Mozilla's Popcorn Maker (https://popcorn.webmaker.org/ https://popcorn.webmaker.org/) arise.
gregcohn 14y ago
this is amazing.
- gregcohn 14y ago
  can anyone explain to me why this comment would be downvoted?
  - chrismorgan 14y ago
    I imagine it would be because the comment is not perceived to add any value at all and is merely consuming space.
arscan 14y ago
I think this works because the little videos in the breaks actually do a great job of complementing the content of the article (and happen to be pretty). There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more harm then good for somebody actually reading the interview. They were more distracting than anything. I have a feeling that we'll see a lot more of this technique in the future. I personally hope that it doesn't just get slapped on for its visual appeal, but rather as a medium to present value-added content (like this NY Times article did). [1] http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/ http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/
- tapp 14y ago
  Completely agree on both counts. As designers and developers it will be difficult to resist the urge to replicate this all over the place purely for the visual impact, but I hope we don't. The use was so fantastic here precisely because this sort of story cried out for exactly these tools to provide a deeper understanding.
- sharkweek 14y ago
  Pitchfork (the music review site) employs this technique for their "Cover Story" features, some are better than others. I personally enjoy the "alive" feel of the stories: http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/ http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Beautiful, but one fatal flaw is that they make the font size dependent on window width. I usually have to browser windows open and next to each other, each using about 720 horizontal pixels. With Pitchfork’s layout that results in way too tiny fonts. I think it’s fundamentally wrong to make font size dependent on viewport width. What you want is to make it dependent on ppi and typical viewing distances (a phone can get aways with a smaller font because compared to a laptop, viewing distances are shorter) you can expect on the device that is used to display the content. Sadly, there is no straightforward way to access this information and we are currently limited to educated guesses.
Swizec 14y ago
Can I just say I really really love this new design? It's wonderful.
flurpitude 14y ago
All I saw was a white screen. Turned out to be Ghostery blocking some content. Ghostery, you have a twisted sense of humour.
- yaddayadda 14y ago
  Thank you. I tried to figure out which one, but in the end just enabled everything.
ISL 14y ago
The presentation is impressive. May future articles be so well-presented. The people killed in Tunnel Creek and around our region on the same day were good friends, parents, and people. This slide, in particular, has attracted so much attention because those involved are professionals and because the event resonated so strongly within the ski media community. Missing from a lot of this accident's coverage is how very much life the slide victims had lived. We can honor them by living as well as they did. Jim Jack, head judge for the Freeride World Tour, skiing with kids on the hometown hill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30 Those of you at startups may find resonance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ
- chair6 14y ago
  I was riding at Stevens the day before this went down. It was deep, backcountry avalanche risk was high. Crappy footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU Ditto that sentiment. Live passionately, look out for others.
andybak 14y ago
First thought: That's really beautiful Second thought: My fan's gone mad. Glad I'm on AC...
infinityetc 14y ago
I first read the entire story on the mobile app, not even knowing that it was part of a larger presentation. The writing itself is very compelling, but the format on the full site adds so much. Tracking the people through the thumbnail images and seeing the different parts of the mountain matched up to the images the story had produced in my head. It's a testament to the content and the medium that they chose.
MichaelApproved 14y ago
Trying to read this story was really frustrating on an iPhone. I had to keep swiping left and right because the zoom was locked to about double the width of my screen. It's a shame because, from the sound of the other comments, it sounds like a really nice layout on the desktop. It's a shame they destroyed the mobile experience.
- nikkisnow 14y ago
  On linux, whether it's Chrome or Firefox, none of the videos play. Really great experience but would love to see the videos. When I get home, I'll have to pop open my Mac to get the full experience.
  - typpo 14y ago
    I had this issue but noticed it's because the Ghostery chrome extension blocks Brightcove, where the videos are hosted. Maybe you have a similar problem?
    - scw 14y ago
      I also had this issue, in my case the culprit was the Kill-Flash extension. Adding nytimes.com and brightcove.com to the whitelist made everything work.
  - codex 14y ago
    That's not my experience with Chrome on Linux; everything worked.
  - neopallium 14y ago
    The videos on both Firefox 17 and Chrome 24 worked for me on Linux.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    Works fine for me in Chrome and Firefox on Xubuntu.
  - bwaldrep 14y ago
sixQuarks 14y ago
Beautiful!
scottcha 14y ago
As an owner of an Avalanche Safety app mobile shop I'd say its amazing to get some of this innovation in to articles like this. Getting users to think about the judgement and impact of the choices they make when they are seeking this rush is a very challenging. Breaking the mold to make a possibly more impactful presentation is exactly what Avalanche education needs.
- mscarborough 14y ago
  I completely agree. As a person that gets 50+ days skiing per year, and loves powder, you have to PAY ATTENTION. Those powder runs look great until you understand how wrong it can go. And people, don't jump into tree runs to avoid anything. It's plenty fast in there and if you are too slow, you're dead. It's OK to ask for a ride down from the lifties.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- yukoncornelius 14y ago
  What is the app?
  - scottcha 14y ago
    http://www.ullrlabs.com http://www.ullrlabs.com
mrb 14y ago
Sigh, Flash crashed on me (Chrome 23, Windows 7 64-bit)... I bet doing this in HTML5 would be more reliable. Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the following paragraph: "To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally." How saddening. They worked hard to make it HTML5 compliant, but the user experience for some is ruined by this ad crashing everything...
- untog 14y ago
  All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me. The mountain-top diagram isn't Flash, either.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me. Not the case here, the "big" ones are <video> tags but the smaller videos embedded from linked from the text is flash (and that's apparently sufficient to make everything crawl to a halt, Chrome barely shows up in top but the flash process maxes out a core)
sillysaurus 14y ago
In case it's helpful, here's a screenshot of what this article looks like on an iPhone (Chrome): http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png It won't let me zoom out or zoom in. The only way to read the article is by dragging back and forth repeatedly. Technical/debugging note: everything was fine before the top header image fully loaded. I could zoom out and zoom in before that image showed up, so therefore that header image is somehow removing the ability to zoom for iPhone users (and is also causing the 200% zoom-in).
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- alecperkins 14y ago
  Odd. It looks perfectly fine to me, in both mobile Safari and mobile Chrome. The text is completely visible, with a little padding on either side, and videos all slide nicely into the text column.
chair6 14y ago
Snowboarding (resort and backcountry) is my preferred diversion from computers and 'real' life, and I was riding at Stevens the day before Tunnel Creek slid. This is a very meaningful presentation of a tragic event, and very real example of the risks involved in getting out in the snow. For those of you more interested in the avalanche / snow-science side of things than that this doesn't render properly on your mobile device, check out http://nwac.us http://nwac.us. Specifically, here is their initial analysis of the Tunnel Creek incident: http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_2012/Preliminary_Tunnel_Creek_Avalanche_Accident_2-19-2012.pdf http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_20...
grecy 14y ago
I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading this article it was very hard not to angry. Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths. * 16 people is a huge no-no. * The fact that someone in the group (a Liftie!) didn't even have a beacon should be a HUGE warning sign. * Hitting the slope at 11:45 seems wrong to me - the day had warmed by then allowing the snow to consolidate. * No clear route identification or plan * The didn't dig a snow pit to assess avalanche conditions on the slope they were about to hit - my personal number 1 * Multiple people dropped in at once - the biggest no-no of all! * They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway! * Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path. * Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM. * Calling 911 to report a body is a freaking waste of time and could cost others' buried their lives. KEEP SEARCHING AND DIGGING! I hate to say it: They were asking for it, and a lot of them knew better. Please, please, please, never go into the back country without training. Even a weekend course will be great. Don't let your friends or those more experienced than you convince you it's not needed - anyone that says that is not worth going with, because you are risking your life with people that don't know what they're talking about. EDIT: If you want the first-person avalanche experience, watch this video. I go snowboarding here all the time. Turn the sound way up to really feel it. This person was saved by well trained back country ski partners. http://vimeo.com/6581009 http://vimeo.com/6581009
- ISL 14y ago
  The group was composed of well-trained and knowledgeable skiers. I'd disagree, in whole or in part, with points 3,4,5,6,8,9,10, but HN isn't the place to quarterback an accident. Each point above is well-founded, but may not apply in this situation. I think that the main reason that Mrs. Saugstad is doing so many interviews is to spread the word about avalanche and snow safety education. Snow is a counterintuitive medium. If you're headed into the backcountry, you owe it to your friends and family to take a class and learn. (Snow science is super fun, too.)
jameszol 14y ago
What a stunning tribute to the story. Every part of this was precisely, beautifully and expertly planned to have a profound emotional pull to see the story through to the end. It worked. While I was reading, I felt the emotion from the words + the animations + video + audio. I love the format, design and style. Simply brilliant.
EdwardBeckett 14y ago
The initial impression is breathtaking - captivating and provocative. Love it.
epa 14y ago
Very nice web design on this page.. great.
bmuon 14y ago
The NYTimes guys are doing some really really good HTML work!
jrwoodruff 14y ago
The NYT just kinda blew my mind. A newspaper article just blew my mind. This is, by far, the best multimedia storytelling I think I've ever seen. Kudos to the team involved in putting this together, you've shown me the future of media and the internet.
- snambi 14y ago
  Excellent story telling, beautiful pictures, animations and with minimal clicks.
- jobu 14y ago
  I was reading some of the other comments here and wondering if anyone else thought the multimedia content upstaged the writing. This is the better than any kind of storytelling I've ever seen. Videos that auto play as you get to them. 3-D maps that rotate, zoom and plot a course as you scroll down. Path markers that draw on the map as the writer describes the scene. Hopefully more authors and artists will embrace this level of detail and integration of multimedia content with their stories.
  - yitchelle 14y ago
    My first thoughts were also on the same line as yours, but I guess that any disruptions (or mini ones such the way this story was delivered), we start off by being floored by the technology. Once the technology becomes ubiquitous, the content comes to forefront and becomes key. I hope this trend of story telling with rich media content continues. Total immersion could be just around the corner.
- fourstar 14y ago
  I'm not surprised since Jeremy Ashkenas works there. They've got probably some of the best front-end web developers and they're extremely smart for realizing that those kind of people are what it takes to keep them relevant today.
  - jashkenas 14y ago
    Credit where credit's due -- this project has nothing to do with me. A small army of talented folks from Sports, the Graphics department, Photo and Video put it together over the course of several months: http://cl.ly/LibF http://cl.ly/LibF More details on how it was made here: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/198970/how-the-new-york-times-snow-fall-project-unifies-text-multimedia/ http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/198970/how-th...
awinterman 14y ago
Can we take a moment to note what a terrible piece of journalism this is? It's written like a short story. I read half way though and still don't know who lived, who died, or when it happened.
- garretruh 14y ago
  It's called a feature. If you want your news quick and easy, read Google News headlines.
chewxy 14y ago
whilst beautiful, I couldn't stay focused on the story long enough to read it all. So I tried my back button. Oops, I went to the top of the page. Back button again.. nope, still on the page. New York Times, stop hijacking my back button
kerno 14y ago
What am I missing here? It looks visually great, but aren't we basically looking at text with embedded videos? On Twitter the buzz about this made me this was a brand new way of presenting articles - you know what it reminds me of most? A book.
- pyre 14y ago
  This comes across as comparing poor journalism to good journalism and complaining that you it's all 'just words,' so what's the 'big deal?'
  - kerno 14y ago
    Let me try again - the buzz on twitter I referred to was focussed on how this design represented a bold new way of presenting journalism to an audience. My point is; to characterise presenting an article in this interface as revolutionary strikes me as incorrect - it instead harks back to a format that we're all familiar with and which works very well. Which, as I wrote, is the book. The quality of the journalism doesn't come into it; I'm sure it's very good.
stevewilhelm 14y ago
I am surprised this article presents itself best in a browser on my desktop/laptop, then in a browser on my iPad, and has the least interesting presentation in the native NYT iPad App.
yock 14y ago
If you read enough survival memoirs you start to see elements of these stories common between them. One of those elements is concern over how one will be seen by their peers for expressing caution. I don't like to speak authoritatively about most subjects, but I feel very strongly about this one thing. Vanity has no place in the back country. Gosh, in a group of 16 people, not all of whom are acquainted, if at least one doesn't think you're a sissy then it's plainly impossible that everyone is well informed of the risks being taken.
intended 14y ago
Really great job on the format. Well written. All of which goes to naught when flash BSODs W7 on page 6. The heck?
irollboozers 14y ago
Is this the future of newspapers?
technotony 14y ago
I've a lot of experience in back-country, including places like Iran where I skied several peaks. The one time I got into trouble (we had to be rescued by helicopter) was a scarily similar situation to this. I was with a large group (12) of some of the most experienced back-country people I've ever met. I was far and away the least experienced. This group included two Everest summitteers and the head of a mountain rescue service. Because everyone was so experienced they all assumed everyone else was taking the right decisions so they could switch off and relax. Group dynamics are everything in this situation - as they are in any sufficiently complex environment. Luckerly, after a cold night in a snow hole, we were rescued but my learnings were: 1) You need to always have a leader 2) The whole group needs to be aware of the plan at all times, you cannot over communicate 3) Listen to the nagging voice of intuition - if something feels wrong check that feeling out 4) Experts are not always on the top of their name, especially when tired or cold Stay safe this winter people!
- yitchelle 14y ago
  Great advice! These set of advice can even translated into this crazy startup work that we all live in!
moronic_shit 14y ago
dude.
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Pretty snow pictures not impressing me. Annoyed at the interruption of the storey flow. Never watch irrelevant videos anyway - hate podcasts with a passion - information density around zero. So not for everybody. From the comments here, you'd think its gods gift to journalism. Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my browse context so I resent it for that too.
- viraptor 14y ago
  > Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my browse context so I resent it for that too. Right-/long-click your back button (depending on your browser) to get the local history. Then choose one page before NYT.
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Cool! But I wonder why reasonable people would ever write a page to hijack 'Back'. Annoys me every time.
bjhoops1 14y ago
Wow. This should come with a warning that you are likely to spend the next hour and a half engrossed and saddened by this story.
allenwlee 14y ago
Interesting to note that all the snowboarders refused to join the crowd and opted to go their own way. Erin the liftie, who actually took off skiers right on her own; tall Tim, who took off alone hard left; and pankey and Carlson who followed tall Tim and ultimately discovered the bodies. Snowboarders are stereotypically not crowd followers, and that characteristic might have saved them here.
Corrado 14y ago
This kind of "article" is probably why the NYT paywall is actually working. A "newspaper" filled with these types of stories would actually be worth paying for.
grogenaut 14y ago
Not to speak ill of the dead but I don't know WTF these people were thinking. I was skiing at Crystal (~80 miles away) the same day. IIRC we had about 14-16" of freshies that day. It was GORGEOUS in bounds, why go out? I had checked the avalanche data for a side project that day and it was as bad as you can get. And they were skiing in a known serious avalanche hazard zone. Just showing off to out of town bigwigs IMHO. Someone died at Alpental (in the backcountry area), one pass over, that day as well when a slide pushed him off of a cliff.
jrogers65 14y ago
Page loaded, saw the article text briefly. Then the JS loaded and all that remained was the header. Fancy web effects are all well and good but not so much when they prevent you from viewing the content.

525 points by tysone 14y ago

scott_s 14y ago

The best long-form presentation of an article or essay I have ever seen on the internet.

nemo1618 14y ago
Agreed. This article, more than anything else I've seen, convinced me that this is the future of news. Newspapers seem ridiculously outdated by comparison.
subsystem 14y ago
It's great, but I can't help to get flashbacks to the mid '90s multimedia era. If someone would have shown me this as the future cutting edge back then, I probably would have been disappointed.
- codewright 14y ago
  Taste matters. 90s multimedia rarely had it.
  - subsystem 14y ago
    I think most of the encyclopedia CDs, like Microsoft Encarta, were quite tasteful. At least for their time. A blast from the past: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4ptApL-k4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4ptApL-k4
- c1sc0 14y ago
  Had the same feeling. Made me think of a 1997-ish flash-laden special about a Mount Everest ascent some sports channel did. Technically pretty-much the same (integration of text + video + audio + animation), just using HTML instead of Flash. The difference is in the storytelling. This stuff only works if the story is front & central and the gimmicks augment the story.

picklefish 14y ago

What if the future of grade school textbooks was this. Learning would be fascinating. What a great design.

pjmo 14y ago
That is a great point. It would almost be fun to learn in this type of way.
davidw 14y ago
> Learning would be fascinating. I thought it was already, for many subjects.
- lmm 14y ago
  It is, but somehow schools still manage to make it not so.
_delirium 14y ago
I remember a lot of multimedia learning materials in the late '80s and 1990s. Some were good, some weren't, but I don't feel they really improved my education much. The only ones that really stuck with me were more simulation-type ones, not as much these multimedia-text ones. I do recall learning a lot about oil drilling from an oil-drilling simulation game.
thwest 14y ago
Encarta 95 was really great. Really set the tone for my decade later wikipedia browsing habit.

Zaheer 14y ago

Impressed by this feature! I think this is a glimpse at how newspapers can become a lot more relevant/adapt to an online medium. Right now most news sites don't nearly take advantage of presenting a story online.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- pan69 14y ago
  "why would I pay for news when I can get it for free" Why do people buy Time magazine or National Geographic? There is a big difference between "news" and better/well researched background articles. There are whole brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to selling magazines like this. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to transfer this to the web, or has it has become quite popular lately, a tablet of some sort.
- cardamomo 14y ago
  Is it a safe assumption, though, that in the future writers will have the tools needed to more easily and cheaply present their stories in this manner? We are already seeing tools such as Mozilla's Popcorn Maker (https://popcorn.webmaker.org/ https://popcorn.webmaker.org/) arise.

gregcohn 14y ago

this is amazing.

gregcohn 14y ago
can anyone explain to me why this comment would be downvoted?
- chrismorgan 14y ago
  I imagine it would be because the comment is not perceived to add any value at all and is merely consuming space.

arscan 14y ago

I think this works because the little videos in the breaks actually do a great job of complementing the content of the article (and happen to be pretty). There was a link yesterday on HN that used a similar technique, but the breaks were static images that didn't really add anything to the content of the article [1]. Sure, they're pretty and novel, but I thought the breaks did more harm then good for somebody actually reading the interview. They were more distracting than anything. I have a feeling that we'll see a lot more of this technique in the future. I personally hope that it doesn't just get slapped on for its visual appeal, but rather as a medium to present value-added content (like this NY Times article did). [1] http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/ http://womenandtech.com/interview/heather-payne/

tapp 14y ago
Completely agree on both counts. As designers and developers it will be difficult to resist the urge to replicate this all over the place purely for the visual impact, but I hope we don't. The use was so fantastic here precisely because this sort of story cried out for exactly these tools to provide a deeper understanding.
sharkweek 14y ago
Pitchfork (the music review site) employs this technique for their "Cover Story" features, some are better than others. I personally enjoy the "alive" feel of the stories: http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/ http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/
- arrrg 14y ago
  Beautiful, but one fatal flaw is that they make the font size dependent on window width. I usually have to browser windows open and next to each other, each using about 720 horizontal pixels. With Pitchfork’s layout that results in way too tiny fonts. I think it’s fundamentally wrong to make font size dependent on viewport width. What you want is to make it dependent on ppi and typical viewing distances (a phone can get aways with a smaller font because compared to a laptop, viewing distances are shorter) you can expect on the device that is used to display the content. Sadly, there is no straightforward way to access this information and we are currently limited to educated guesses.

Swizec 14y ago

Can I just say I really really love this new design? It's wonderful.

flurpitude 14y ago

All I saw was a white screen. Turned out to be Ghostery blocking some content. Ghostery, you have a twisted sense of humour.

yaddayadda 14y ago
Thank you. I tried to figure out which one, but in the end just enabled everything.

ISL 14y ago

The presentation is impressive. May future articles be so well-presented. The people killed in Tunnel Creek and around our region on the same day were good friends, parents, and people. This slide, in particular, has attracted so much attention because those involved are professionals and because the event resonated so strongly within the ski media community. Missing from a lot of this accident's coverage is how very much life the slide victims had lived. We can honor them by living as well as they did. Jim Jack, head judge for the Freeride World Tour, skiing with kids on the hometown hill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQ2gU0OJ30 Those of you at startups may find resonance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDR5_qbwPQ

chair6 14y ago
I was riding at Stevens the day before this went down. It was deep, backcountry avalanche risk was high. Crappy footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no34MOpMBxU Ditto that sentiment. Live passionately, look out for others.

andybak 14y ago

First thought: That's really beautiful Second thought: My fan's gone mad. Glad I'm on AC...

infinityetc 14y ago

I first read the entire story on the mobile app, not even knowing that it was part of a larger presentation. The writing itself is very compelling, but the format on the full site adds so much. Tracking the people through the thumbnail images and seeing the different parts of the mountain matched up to the images the story had produced in my head. It's a testament to the content and the medium that they chose.

MichaelApproved 14y ago

Trying to read this story was really frustrating on an iPhone. I had to keep swiping left and right because the zoom was locked to about double the width of my screen. It's a shame because, from the sound of the other comments, it sounds like a really nice layout on the desktop. It's a shame they destroyed the mobile experience.

nikkisnow 14y ago
On linux, whether it's Chrome or Firefox, none of the videos play. Really great experience but would love to see the videos. When I get home, I'll have to pop open my Mac to get the full experience.
- typpo 14y ago
  I had this issue but noticed it's because the Ghostery chrome extension blocks Brightcove, where the videos are hosted. Maybe you have a similar problem?
  - scw 14y ago
    I also had this issue, in my case the culprit was the Kill-Flash extension. Adding nytimes.com and brightcove.com to the whitelist made everything work.
- codex 14y ago
  That's not my experience with Chrome on Linux; everything worked.
- neopallium 14y ago
  The videos on both Firefox 17 and Chrome 24 worked for me on Linux.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Works fine for me in Chrome and Firefox on Xubuntu.
- bwaldrep 14y ago

sixQuarks 14y ago

Beautiful!

scottcha 14y ago

As an owner of an Avalanche Safety app mobile shop I'd say its amazing to get some of this innovation in to articles like this. Getting users to think about the judgement and impact of the choices they make when they are seeking this rush is a very challenging. Breaking the mold to make a possibly more impactful presentation is exactly what Avalanche education needs.

mscarborough 14y ago
I completely agree. As a person that gets 50+ days skiing per year, and loves powder, you have to PAY ATTENTION. Those powder runs look great until you understand how wrong it can go. And people, don't jump into tree runs to avoid anything. It's plenty fast in there and if you are too slow, you're dead. It's OK to ask for a ride down from the lifties.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
yukoncornelius 14y ago
What is the app?
- scottcha 14y ago
  http://www.ullrlabs.com http://www.ullrlabs.com

mrb 14y ago

Sigh, Flash crashed on me (Chrome 23, Windows 7 64-bit)... I bet doing this in HTML5 would be more reliable. Edit: the Flash content is the ad in the middle of the page, right after the following paragraph: "To head straight down to the bottom is to enter what experts call a terrain trap: a funnel of trouble and clumsy skiing, clogged with trees and rocks and confined by high walls. Few go that way intentionally." How saddening. They worked hard to make it HTML5 compliant, but the user experience for some is ruined by this ad crashing everything...

untog 14y ago
All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me. The mountain-top diagram isn't Flash, either.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > All the videos are HTML5 <video> tags for me. Not the case here, the "big" ones are <video> tags but the smaller videos embedded from linked from the text is flash (and that's apparently sufficient to make everything crawl to a halt, Chrome barely shows up in top but the flash process maxes out a core)

sillysaurus 14y ago

In case it's helpful, here's a screenshot of what this article looks like on an iPhone (Chrome): http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png http://i.imgur.com/B1ZkO.png It won't let me zoom out or zoom in. The only way to read the article is by dragging back and forth repeatedly. Technical/debugging note: everything was fine before the top header image fully loaded. I could zoom out and zoom in before that image showed up, so therefore that header image is somehow removing the ability to zoom for iPhone users (and is also causing the 200% zoom-in).

deleted 14y ago
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alecperkins 14y ago
Odd. It looks perfectly fine to me, in both mobile Safari and mobile Chrome. The text is completely visible, with a little padding on either side, and videos all slide nicely into the text column.

chair6 14y ago

Snowboarding (resort and backcountry) is my preferred diversion from computers and 'real' life, and I was riding at Stevens the day before Tunnel Creek slid. This is a very meaningful presentation of a tragic event, and very real example of the risks involved in getting out in the snow. For those of you more interested in the avalanche / snow-science side of things than that this doesn't render properly on your mobile device, check out http://nwac.us http://nwac.us. Specifically, here is their initial analysis of the Tunnel Creek incident: http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_2012/Preliminary_Tunnel_Creek_Avalanche_Accident_2-19-2012.pdf http://www.nwac.us/media/uploads/documents/accidents/2011_20...

grecy 14y ago

I'm an avoid back country snowboarder (split boarder) in the Canadian Rockies, and now further north into Coastal Alaska and I've spent many seasons as ski patrol, and taken numerous Avalanche training courses. After my first 4 day course, the message was very clear: "You are now the least knowledgeable people that should be in the back country". I kept thinking "I know just enough to know I know nothing". Reading this article it was very hard not to angry. Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths. * 16 people is a huge no-no. * The fact that someone in the group (a Liftie!) didn't even have a beacon should be a HUGE warning sign. * Hitting the slope at 11:45 seems wrong to me - the day had warmed by then allowing the snow to consolidate. * No clear route identification or plan * The didn't dig a snow pit to assess avalanche conditions on the slope they were about to hit - my personal number 1 * Multiple people dropped in at once - the biggest no-no of all! * They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway! * Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path. * Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM. * Calling 911 to report a body is a freaking waste of time and could cost others' buried their lives. KEEP SEARCHING AND DIGGING! I hate to say it: They were asking for it, and a lot of them knew better. Please, please, please, never go into the back country without training. Even a weekend course will be great. Don't let your friends or those more experienced than you convince you it's not needed - anyone that says that is not worth going with, because you are risking your life with people that don't know what they're talking about. EDIT: If you want the first-person avalanche experience, watch this video. I go snowboarding here all the time. Turn the sound way up to really feel it. This person was saved by well trained back country ski partners. http://vimeo.com/6581009 http://vimeo.com/6581009

ISL 14y ago
The group was composed of well-trained and knowledgeable skiers. I'd disagree, in whole or in part, with points 3,4,5,6,8,9,10, but HN isn't the place to quarterback an accident. Each point above is well-founded, but may not apply in this situation. I think that the main reason that Mrs. Saugstad is doing so many interviews is to spread the word about avalanche and snow safety education. Snow is a counterintuitive medium. If you're headed into the backcountry, you owe it to your friends and family to take a class and learn. (Snow science is super fun, too.)

jameszol 14y ago

What a stunning tribute to the story. Every part of this was precisely, beautifully and expertly planned to have a profound emotional pull to see the story through to the end. It worked. While I was reading, I felt the emotion from the words + the animations + video + audio. I love the format, design and style. Simply brilliant.

EdwardBeckett 14y ago

The initial impression is breathtaking - captivating and provocative. Love it.

epa 14y ago

Very nice web design on this page.. great.

bmuon 14y ago

The NYTimes guys are doing some really really good HTML work!

jrwoodruff 14y ago

The NYT just kinda blew my mind. A newspaper article just blew my mind. This is, by far, the best multimedia storytelling I think I've ever seen. Kudos to the team involved in putting this together, you've shown me the future of media and the internet.

snambi 14y ago
Excellent story telling, beautiful pictures, animations and with minimal clicks.
jobu 14y ago
I was reading some of the other comments here and wondering if anyone else thought the multimedia content upstaged the writing. This is the better than any kind of storytelling I've ever seen. Videos that auto play as you get to them. 3-D maps that rotate, zoom and plot a course as you scroll down. Path markers that draw on the map as the writer describes the scene. Hopefully more authors and artists will embrace this level of detail and integration of multimedia content with their stories.
- yitchelle 14y ago
  My first thoughts were also on the same line as yours, but I guess that any disruptions (or mini ones such the way this story was delivered), we start off by being floored by the technology. Once the technology becomes ubiquitous, the content comes to forefront and becomes key. I hope this trend of story telling with rich media content continues. Total immersion could be just around the corner.
fourstar 14y ago
I'm not surprised since Jeremy Ashkenas works there. They've got probably some of the best front-end web developers and they're extremely smart for realizing that those kind of people are what it takes to keep them relevant today.
- jashkenas 14y ago
  Credit where credit's due -- this project has nothing to do with me. A small army of talented folks from Sports, the Graphics department, Photo and Video put it together over the course of several months: http://cl.ly/LibF http://cl.ly/LibF More details on how it was made here: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/198970/how-the-new-york-times-snow-fall-project-unifies-text-multimedia/ http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/198970/how-th...

awinterman 14y ago

Can we take a moment to note what a terrible piece of journalism this is? It's written like a short story. I read half way though and still don't know who lived, who died, or when it happened.

garretruh 14y ago
It's called a feature. If you want your news quick and easy, read Google News headlines.

chewxy 14y ago

whilst beautiful, I couldn't stay focused on the story long enough to read it all. So I tried my back button. Oops, I went to the top of the page. Back button again.. nope, still on the page. New York Times, stop hijacking my back button

kerno 14y ago

What am I missing here? It looks visually great, but aren't we basically looking at text with embedded videos? On Twitter the buzz about this made me this was a brand new way of presenting articles - you know what it reminds me of most? A book.

pyre 14y ago
This comes across as comparing poor journalism to good journalism and complaining that you it's all 'just words,' so what's the 'big deal?'
- kerno 14y ago
  Let me try again - the buzz on twitter I referred to was focussed on how this design represented a bold new way of presenting journalism to an audience. My point is; to characterise presenting an article in this interface as revolutionary strikes me as incorrect - it instead harks back to a format that we're all familiar with and which works very well. Which, as I wrote, is the book. The quality of the journalism doesn't come into it; I'm sure it's very good.

stevewilhelm 14y ago

I am surprised this article presents itself best in a browser on my desktop/laptop, then in a browser on my iPad, and has the least interesting presentation in the native NYT iPad App.

yock 14y ago

If you read enough survival memoirs you start to see elements of these stories common between them. One of those elements is concern over how one will be seen by their peers for expressing caution. I don't like to speak authoritatively about most subjects, but I feel very strongly about this one thing. Vanity has no place in the back country. Gosh, in a group of 16 people, not all of whom are acquainted, if at least one doesn't think you're a sissy then it's plainly impossible that everyone is well informed of the risks being taken.

intended 14y ago

Really great job on the format. Well written. All of which goes to naught when flash BSODs W7 on page 6. The heck?

irollboozers 14y ago

Is this the future of newspapers?

technotony 14y ago

I've a lot of experience in back-country, including places like Iran where I skied several peaks. The one time I got into trouble (we had to be rescued by helicopter) was a scarily similar situation to this. I was with a large group (12) of some of the most experienced back-country people I've ever met. I was far and away the least experienced. This group included two Everest summitteers and the head of a mountain rescue service. Because everyone was so experienced they all assumed everyone else was taking the right decisions so they could switch off and relax. Group dynamics are everything in this situation - as they are in any sufficiently complex environment. Luckerly, after a cold night in a snow hole, we were rescued but my learnings were: 1) You need to always have a leader 2) The whole group needs to be aware of the plan at all times, you cannot over communicate 3) Listen to the nagging voice of intuition - if something feels wrong check that feeling out 4) Experts are not always on the top of their name, especially when tired or cold Stay safe this winter people!

yitchelle 14y ago
Great advice! These set of advice can even translated into this crazy startup work that we all live in!

moronic_shit 14y ago

dude.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

Pretty snow pictures not impressing me. Annoyed at the interruption of the storey flow. Never watch irrelevant videos anyway - hate podcasts with a passion - information density around zero. So not for everybody. From the comments here, you'd think its gods gift to journalism. Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my browse context so I resent it for that too.

viraptor 14y ago
> Also it hijacked my Back button on my browser, had to kill the page, lost my browse context so I resent it for that too. Right-/long-click your back button (depending on your browser) to get the local history. Then choose one page before NYT.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Cool! But I wonder why reasonable people would ever write a page to hijack 'Back'. Annoys me every time.

bjhoops1 14y ago

Wow. This should come with a warning that you are likely to spend the next hour and a half engrossed and saddened by this story.

allenwlee 14y ago

Interesting to note that all the snowboarders refused to join the crowd and opted to go their own way. Erin the liftie, who actually took off skiers right on her own; tall Tim, who took off alone hard left; and pankey and Carlson who followed tall Tim and ultimately discovered the bodies. Snowboarders are stereotypically not crowd followers, and that characteristic might have saved them here.

Corrado 14y ago

This kind of "article" is probably why the NYT paywall is actually working. A "newspaper" filled with these types of stories would actually be worth paying for.

grogenaut 14y ago

Not to speak ill of the dead but I don't know WTF these people were thinking. I was skiing at Crystal (~80 miles away) the same day. IIRC we had about 14-16" of freshies that day. It was GORGEOUS in bounds, why go out? I had checked the avalanche data for a side project that day and it was as bad as you can get. And they were skiing in a known serious avalanche hazard zone. Just showing off to out of town bigwigs IMHO. Someone died at Alpental (in the backcountry area), one pass over, that day as well when a slide pushed him off of a cliff.

jrogers65 14y ago

Page loaded, saw the article text briefly. Then the JS loaded and all that remained was the header. Fancy web effects are all well and good but not so much when they prevent you from viewing the content.