I’ve spent much of my life pursuing risky hobbies like rock climbing, backcountry skiing, motorcycling and mountain biking.
All involve ‘no fall’ moments or sections - if you fall, you’ll die. I don’t seek these out, and since becoming a husband and dad they’re rare, but they happen.
When you’re not in ‘no fall’ terrain, you’re either moving towards it, away from it, or it’s nearby. So whether you want to find them or avoid them, you need to be able to recognise them.
Sometimes the source of the risk is imperceptible.
You must always consider the three components of risk before making a decision;
Event Risk - How likely is a thing to happen?
Outcome Risk - If the thing happens, how likely is a severe outcome?
Frequency - Is this a frequent activity that will make small event risks grow over time?
Here’s an example. You’re driving a car at a trackday. You’re driving fast. Your event risk of spinning your car out rises, until it’s high. What’s the outcome risk? If you’re at a trackday with few other cars on the track and large asphalt runoff areas, the risk that spinning out causes a severe outcome is low. Your event risk is high, but your outcome risk is low. So keep pushing the limits! You don’t do trackdays frequently, so a small event risk is not going to accrue, or have accrued into a big event risk..
What if the trackday is busy with many other cars on circuit, and few run-off areas, like at the Nurburgring? As you push faster, your event risk - the risk of spinning off - rises, just as before. But your outcome risk - the risk of damaging your car, yourself, others - is now high. You are a trackday fan, so you frequently attend trackdays, so small risks build over time into big risks. So back off!
It’s essential to always consider event risk, outcome risk and frequency when assessing risk.
Frequency is particularly important in the mountains because you’ll likely be in exposed areas thousands of times over your whole life. Performing correct safety precautions and minimising your chance of getting caught in an avalanche to just 1/1000 sounds fine at first, until you realise you’ll likely do that more than a thousand times in your life. So your lifetime risk will tend towards 1/1, or certainty.
I got my ‘risk-aware’ mindset from my dad. He was a jet-fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force from 1952 until the 70’s. Around half of the mates he learnt to fly with didn’t survive to see 30. Flying jet aircraft in their first decade of their existence was extremely dangerous, to put it mildly. Both the event and outcome risk components were extreme.
Risk management in one sphere of life offers us crucial lessons for risk management elsewhere.
Below you’ll find a set of resources I’ve amassed over the years that help me to make sound and safe risk-management decisions when skiing in the backcountry, off-piste.
I’m sharing it here because it is all fascinating and exciting stuff and offers you lessons that will stand you in good stead in everyday life and when you’re at work, even if you never step into bindings on snow.
Mastering mountain risk assessment helps me better manage risk in derivatives trading, investing and in supporting the businesses of my consulting clients.
Tutorials
NEVER, I repeat NEVER go anywhere off piste in snowy mountains without an avalanche transceiver, a shovel and probe and - this is the MOST important part - having practised with them.
They are useless, you are useless, if you don’t know how to use them. Never rent them and think you will be able to work out how to use them while your friends are dying meters away. Ask me how to practise with them, it’s easy and fun. And will save lives if you ever need to perform an avalanche search.
Bad workpeople never blame their tools, but good ones always use the best tools.
Off piste means anywhere outside piste markers, so includes ‘side piste’ where you’re in sight of pistes; it’s terrain that is just as dangerous as remote backcountry.
Practise with your avalanche transceiver in the summer when you can hide it in field or on a beach… it’s a great game to play with kids.
Every two or three years in winter, practise a ‘full drill’ by burying a transceiver in a backpack under snow, to practise the search, the probing and digging.
Here’s an excellent printable, pocketable card to help you search effectively. http://www.acmg.ca/05pdf/AvalancheCard.pdf
Just remember, if you ever have to use any of your rescue gear, you’ve made bad decisions, are having a bad day, and are likely going to be recovering someone or people with serious injuries.
This is an old link; keeping it here in case it reappears: http://old.avalanche.ca/resources/cac/attachments/rescue-quick-reference
An excellent multi-stage tutorial series: http://www.avalanche.ca/tutorial/
The importance of the compass orientation of the face: https://avalanche.org/avalanche-encyclopedia/aspect/
A superb two-part tutorial: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/skills/avalanche_basics_part_1_anatomy_of_an_avalanche-5178
Resources
The best avalanche safety book is Bruce Tremper’s ‘Avalanche Essentials’ book. If you only read one thing, read this book.
Bruce Temper works at the Utah Avalanche Centre and he and his colleagues write an excellent blog here. It’s full of avalanche reports one can learn a lot from, practical tips, peer reviewed avalanche and behavioural science research and more.
Here’s their super avalanche safety "Little Things" series:
Part 1 https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/31078
Part 2 https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/31389
Part 3 https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/31488
Part 4 https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/31759
Here’s a famous attempt to quantify mountain risk planning, the Munter 3x3 system, in French: http://www.cas-gruyere.ch/wp/wp-content/resources/formation/3x3.pdf. I’ve always found Munter3x3 too laborious, but it’s nevertheless important to understand even if you don’t use it every day.
A simpler 3x3 test, this time in English: http://mountainacademy.salomon.com/en/demo/95/do-this-right-and-only-1-percent-of-the-original-risk-will-remain
A decision framework inspired by the Munter;
http://www.monosar.org/safety_article_avalanche/CAAReviewEuropeanDecisionFrameworks.pdf
The Nivotest: http://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/objects/issw-2000-554-557.pdf
There are some super planning applications around now. The best one I use is Fatmaps.com, which isn’t avalanche specific but features all sorts of useful tools important to risk management like face orientation and slope angle.
Whiterisk is another; it also has a free account, then is CHF29 or CHF59 per year but Fatmaps is a much more broadly useful website and app.
Heuristics
‘Heuristics’ is another way of saying ‘behavioural shortcut.’ It’s when our mind tricks us into taking decisions that aren’t rational; they mitigate our performance in sales, negotiations and everyday work all the time.
Their importance came to light in the 80s and 90s when snow science academics (yes there is such a thing!) realised that their colleagues were dying at the same rate in avalanches as people with little or no training.
How was this possible? They soon worked out that it’s down to the one thing we all have in common; our fallible brains.
Heuristics Research Paper: https://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/objects/issw-2002-244-251.pdf.
For more on this, read Atul Gawande’s peerless “Checklist Manifesto.”
Six Heuristic Traps:
http://www.summitpost.org/human-factors-in-avalanche-incidents/188636
http://www.stylealtitude.com/the-heuristic-trap-avalanche-avoidance.html
F.A.C.e.T.S., is an acronym coined by avalanche expert Ian McCammon coined as a tool to remind people that their judgment is influenced by dangerously common biases. This is a good article on them;
Familiarity - You’ve been here before many times in similar conditions;
Acceptance - You’re with friends and colleagues…. you all want the people you’re with to have a great day and you don’t want to rock the boat;
Commitment - You’ve got a specific objective in mind and don’t want anything to get in your way;
Expert Halo - You’re with someone who you think, rightly or wrongly, knows what they’re doing so you trust them…. blindly.
Tracks/Scarcity - This is your one chance to do this…. and you don’t have many opportunities to get it done;
Social Facilitation - Look! People have done this already, we’ll definitely be fine!
Notice how these all apply to much more than skiing?
F amiliarity
A cceptance
C ommitment
E xpert Halo
T racks/ Scarcity
S Social Facilitation
Here’s more on it; http://montana.edu/snowscience/tracks
I object to the common trope that you should never go off piste skiing without a mountain guide. Time and time again mountain guides have killed their clients. Here’s a strong and tragic example of how incompetent mountain guides can be. On the other hand, if you don’t have time to learn how to be self-sufficient, carefully choose a guide, brief them on your expectations of safety and never assume they have prime authority to make every decision.
Articles:
Pandemic and risk:
I’m struck by how governments crippled their economies in 2020 to mitigate the effect of a virus that was relatively benign, and no more serious than the flu which killed millions of people across Europe in the 2018 pandemic. Excess mortality saw no statistically significant shifts, at the time, or in hindsight. But you likely felt at risk. Your baseline risk of death was unchanged.
But we are really bad at accurately balancing risks with consequences. This article from Outside Online has more on this topic.
This article from Utah about why/how avalanche airbags work or don’t is very good. Includes more info on av ‘behaviours'. This article has more on avalanche airbags. There’s a big difference between the statistics we first took for granted, funded by av-bag companies, and subsequent independent and meta analysis. Av bags work and are worth having, but don’t make as much difference as you might think. Particularly when you’ve got about a 50% chance of being seriously injured in the slide, something an av bag won’t save you from.
Going with a guide? Remember, they have an incentive to take risks; they don’t get paid if they cancel due to conditions, so never trust a guide with your safety. Trust them to be an experienced companion, but you alone are responsible for risk assessment, route finding and rescue. Here’s a well-written account of how trusting a guide can kill you.
Why thinner snow can mean more avalanches, which is counterintuitive:
http://mountainacademy.salomon.com/en/demo/142/danger-7-thin-snowpack-in-a-snow-rich-winter
https://www.avalanche.ca/cherry-bowl
Two excellent articles of true stories of an avalanche, and what was missed;
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek
http://features.powder.com/human-factor-2.0/chapter-1
Human Factors: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/magazine/avalanche-school-heidi-julavits.html Kind learning vs Wicked learning.
Victor de la Rue on the Verbier death of his friend: https://mpora.com/snowboarding/in-his-own-words-xavier-de-le-rue-on-the-day-everything-changed/. I was particularly struck by his mention of having studied CPR, but feeling like what he was doing was pointless. It may have been for someone with severe other injuries, but CPR works, so he did the right thing.
Avalanche Risk Ratings 1-5: https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/15826
The story of a…. wait for it…. successful rescue from a 4m-deep burial! https://gripped.com/news/skier-saved-from-deep-under-rockies-avalanche/
Videos
Some of these videos are instructional, some are lectures, and some are first-hand ‘POV’ footage of what being caught in an avalanche, or falling into a crevasse, is like.
Learning from others’ mistakes is an extremely valuable way to avoid them yourself - you benefit from the experience of others.
It’s particularly useful with mountain safety because it viscerally shows you how important it is to avoid avalanches and crevasses at all costs.
Here’s a scary old film from USA. Every video like this has something to learn from.
Propagation, slab and terrain trap in action:
An excellent tutorial lecture on human factors explained above.
Greg Hill’s useful quickcheck: Wind Weather Warmth WhereAmI?, the "W" Loop.
An excellent summary of the broadest way to view mountain hazards. Falling off the mountain, falling into the mountain, exposure and lastly (note this is in no order of probability) avalanche.
Avalanche burial in the French Alps vividly filmed by the rescuer POV.
Good touring tutorial stuff from Jens at the excellent StompIt Tutorials that includes mountain safety tips.
Useful tips featuring “Know Before You Go.”
Some great tips from Avalanche Canada on snow layers, what to watch for and changing conditions feature in this video:
For anyone who’s an avalanche beginner this is fun and includes a little bit of science…. a great place to start.
A second port of call for more beginner info - a bit too fast & brief, but something to build on.
Here’s why about half of the injuries and deaths in avalanches happen in the slide; trees are one of the ‘terrain traps’ you must avoid at all costs.
A major consideration in risk assessment is the outcome. You can travel through a high risk area, if the outcome risk mild, but you must at all costs avoid low event risk areas that have a high outcome risk.
For example;
High event risk + low outcome risk; When you have to traverse a wind-loaded face to get home, above a long, flat, wide valley , where in the event of an avalanche, you’ll likely slide to a gentle stop and be easily rescued?
As opposed to low event risk + high outcome risk; an area you want to cross that’s a 20 degree slope that maybe has some layer instability, but that’s above a cliff, so even a small slide will likely push you over a 60m vertical drop.
Even a small slide that pushes you through trees is likely to cause severe injury, for obvious reasons. Read more on this video at Gripped.com here.
And here’s a crevasse glacier rescue. Note how easy it was for his companions to have never seen it happen; he’s saved by a random passerby.
This emphasises something one of my mountain ski-partners taught me. If you’ve got your touring skis on, ALWAYS carry your skins even if you’re not touring; you may have to move uphill fast to perform a rescue of someone else.
Not to mention, always have eyes-on your partner in high-risk terrain, or be prepared to face the consequences.
Again, learn to recognise when you pass from low risk to high risk exposure, and adapt your behaviour accordingly.
Sit back, open a beer and enjoy a documentary that’s exciting and crammed full of valuable lessons.
Avalanche Vocab
Graupel
Also called soft hail or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of rime. The term graupel comes from German.
Graupel is distinct from hail, small hail and ice pellets: the World Meteorological Organisation defines small hail as snow pellets encapsulated by ice, a precipitation halfway between graupel and hail.The METAR code for graupel is GS.
See also http://snowslang.com/graupel-definition-precipitation/
Graupel Pooling
Pooled graupel forming a weak layer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mi8a1crBb4
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If you’d like a risk assessment on your business, or to hear how to recognise, assess and mitigate the risks you and your staff face strategically and practically, get in touch.
