Mountain of courage

Andrew Mathieson
HIS eyes cast toward a thought above his head for a moment before muso Chris Plummer switches his focus to jotting down a few lines on paper.
The gritty new verses appease the throng of fans standing out in the audience at his band’s gigs but the words are not cheap, just to sell a few extra tickets for the next show.
For avalanche survivor Chris, the latest batch of songs comes from deep inside a tortured soul.
Building the inner strength to take that near-death experience and turn it into a few ditties took nearly a decade.
“I’m using those times as inspiration,” Chris reflects.
“This new band I’m with, we have only been together for three months and they’ve been great.
“It’s been a good canvas to paint those emotions down on.”
Since a wall of snow more like concrete than soft, white powder hit the Leopold snowboarder, Chris has preferred to mingle in the background of several Geelong bands.
He was a member of Flat Top Grandy, which raged on the pub scene back in the 1990s, before helping form local favourite Test Pilot Molly to popular acclaim.
In many ways Chris’s faithful guitar has been his saviour and, in a sigh of relief, the change in tone is discernible when he talks about playing music.
“It’s been like that all my life, actually,” Chris reflects.
“If I ever get upset, I always pick up a guitar and just start strumming.
“It has been a life saver.”
Life had been good until it changed in a flash that fateful day on Mount Hotham.
It was during the end of the 2000 snow season when Chris and West Australian mate Digby Crawford were having the day off from working the lifts.
They found the steepest run of the mountain – the chute – had been closed to the public, Chris confesses, because of “severe conditions”.
“We were at the bottom of this big, wide, open bowl and there was a guy who was an off-duty ski patroller who cut this big line right across the top of the bowl,” Chris explains.
“All the snow just dropped below him, the bowl collected up and it all went into the shoot.
“Diggers and I were sitting there and we heard this ‘Lookout out’.
“We didn’t have time to turn around and move.
“It must have been a good two-metre wall of snow that hit us on our back.”
The avalanching snow rose higher and the two mates tried to grab passing trees as they were thrown down the shoot.
Despite wearing snow goggles, Chris opened his eyes quickly enough during the avalanche to see little more than a white haze.
“We were underneath and were riding it upside down and all of sudden your face would come up and you’d see light again,” he remembers.
“I was trying to stop myself but then I’d tumble straight back down and my head would go right under again, then I’d do a flip, see a bit of light and grab a few more trees.”
Chris was buried in a standing position, snow up to his nose, one arm over a tree branch and fingernails bleeding.
The avalanche had collected two other men at the end of its run, leaving them buried up to their necks.
Still trapped under the snow, Chris’s attention quickly turned to his mate who was nowhere to be seen.
“I was asking how he was and they must have seen him buried,” he says.
“The ski patroller gave me a horrible look.
“I thought it was all over for Diggers and I lost it then.”
Diggers had been buried upside down somewhere until rescuers noticed specks of snow flicking into the air where he kicked his feet.
They dug straight down and pulled the men out with a few bruises and sore bones.
But the mental scars have continued to this day.
“It has hurt more emotionally, I think,” Chris ponders.
“Afterwards we went back to the bar and I was supposed to work that afternoon.
“I told them there had been an avalanche and I was not going to work.”