Ring, ring, ring!
Today, I am here to ring the bell the signals the early end of recess, because if we can’t behave in the backcountry, we have to get back in the classroom.
Avalanches are serious stuff. You can go out and play, but getting caught in slides is inexcusable behavior. What’s worse is when folks jump on social media sites and the local avalanche center pages to tell stories about how they “didn’t mean it but didn’t get hurt. What’s the big deal?”
An example of one of those big deals occurred in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains on April 16, 2020. A spring storm had laid down 12 inches overnight with just over an inch of water. A moderate mid-elevation wind was blowing from the west, and in upper elevations wind was well into the strong range. No brainer. Here was heavy, new snow with consistent wind in both speed and direction. No pesky, hidden old-snow weak layers from storms past; just sluff avalanches that are easily forecasted and easily avoidable. Or so one would think.
By the end of the day, 31 human-triggered avalanches had been reported with at least four of those involving people being caught and carried.
We have a problem. The American backcountry skier is really good…at skiing. But we are really bad at understanding an avalanche forecast, reading snow and identifying avalanche terrain. In fact, there were 28 caught and carries and 15 burials last year in Utah alone. Colorado shares the same type of numbers, with 43 partial or complete burials. Add fatalities to those numbers and you get the picture: we suck at what we do.
Although most backcountry users have at least some basic level of avalanche education, we are still ignoring very simple information. Worse yet, many of us are recognizing the clues and either trying to outthink avalanches or beat the game. Regardless of why, the result is the same: we are seeing an exponential increase in the number of reported human-triggered avalanches in the United States.
Interestingly, we are not seeing the expected increase in fatal accidents. That is good. It tells me that you at least paid attention to the first part of class: rescue. But you missed the most important part: avoidance.
Let’s go back to the beginning of school. Rescue tools are nothing more than janitorial supplies to be used only in the worst-case scenario. Executing a partner rescue should be commended but never applauded. The only good avalanche rescue is the one that never happened. No matter how good you are at using your beacon, or how perfect your strategic shoveling, eventually, you will lose.
What is the first thing that we teach in an avalanche class? Beacon, shovel, probe, right? Yes, rescue is important, but we need to shift the curriculum to snow, terrain and avoidance. Only then, once you have mastered those concepts, do you get awarded your shovel.
“But if we have to master all this stuff before recess, we will never get to go outside!” Not true. In fact, we can make this simple. One thing that I have learned in my career is that you cannot outsmart the snowpack. Snow is complicated—in fact, it is probably one of the most complicated sciences out there—but you do not have to be a genius to make smart decisions.
Ask one of the greatest snow scientists in history, Ed LaChapelle, stated in his 1980 paper, The Fundamental Process in Conventional Avalanche Forecasting, “The key first question does not deal with the last week’s range of snow-cover temperature gradients or yesterday’s sequence of freeze-thaw crust formations, but simply asks ‘has an avalanche fallen recently?’”
On April 16, the first Tweet and Instagram posts from the Utah Avalanche Center reporting human-triggered slides were going out by 9 a.m. The action continued all day, and the last human-triggered slide occured at 5 p.m. Even without Instagram, all one had to do was look up and see that an avalanche had fallen recently.
Armed with this one piece of solid data, a skier can make a good decision. They can practice avoidance by working terrain. Terrain is the answer to every avalanche problem.
Now, someone might say that they made a perfect ski cut and triggered the slide, so everything is cool. In 90 percent of these cases, I call bullshit. Ski cutting is an often misunderstood tool that can kill and injure avalanche professionals even when it is done with extreme caution and the utmost understanding of the snow and situation.
It is a ski patroller’s job to be an avalanche hunter whereas a backcountry skier needs to be an avalanche avoider. If you want to make avalanches, apply for a patrol job. If you can’t make that commitment, that’s OK, but you must stick with avoiding.
Based on the observations that I read and the actions I observe, people are not making smart decisions. Skiing bold, avalanche-prone lines, making piss-poor ski cuts and, worse, performing partner rescues are signs of incompetence and irresponsibility. When someone gets hurt on the jungle gym, it wrecks everyone’s day.
By taking in lessons of snow, terrain and avoidance first and foremost, we can all go outside and play again. It’s only then that you can have your shovel back, because although you should never need it, sometimes bad things happen. To some extent, there is luck involved in what we do. Just remember that luck is not a strategy—eventually it will run out.
Dave Richards is the Avalanche Program Director at Alta Ski Area.
This essay was originally published in October 2020 in Issue #135. To read more of The Untracked Experience, pick up a copy here or subscribe now.
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