The bond that ties together all past and present students of Boston College is something that is strong yet intangible. This past December at The Canyons, the popular ski resort in Utah, however, this bond was visible. During what was supposed to be just another great day of skiing, the unthinkable happened: A massive avalanche down one of the slopes caused skiers to be buried in snow.
The effect of the Utah avalanche extended to Boston, as some of BC's own were involved. Brothers Brian Meenan, A&S '11, Dan Meenan, A&S '08, and Kevin Meenan, GA&S '08, were all on the mountain skiing and saw the aftermath of the slide and heard people shouting.
"It all seemed absolutely surreal, and still does to some extent," Kevin says in an e-mail. There were two victims of the avalanche: 11-year-old Max Zilvitis and Jesse R. Williams. Max is the son of BC grad Brian Zilvitis. Max and his father were skiing off an expert slope when the avalanche was triggered. According to a preliminary report released by the resort's ski patrol, the slide was approximately 600 vertical feet long and the depth of the snow averaged about 3 to 4 feet. Brian Zilvitis was caught in the movement of the avalanche, but fortunately he was only partially buried and was able to dig himself out. To his horror, it was his young son who was completely covered by the snow.
"We didn't actually see moving snow," Brian Meenan says, "but we got there a few seconds afterwards and heard [Brian Zivilitis] yelling for help. We skied down to the bottom of the slope to try and help."
"None of us had any experience or training in how to handle avalanches, [so we] began to quickly think about the most methodological way of going about looking for Max," Kevin says.
While waiting for ski patrol to arrive, the brothers, along with other skiers who also arrived to help, began to probe the snow where Max was thought to be buried with their ski poles. "We began to 'grid out' small swaths of mountainside, poking a series of closely bunched holes in the snow that would allow us to either locate Max, or make sure that he wasn't in a given area," Kevin says.
2008 Woodie Awards
