What I Learned in Avalanche School (2019)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/magazine/avalanche-school-heidi-julavits.html

by macbookaries • 5 years ago

55 36 5 years ago

neonate• 5 years ago

I am an apprentice avalanche educator. This piece does a really nice job summarizing the world of recreational avalanche risk management, most particularly the so-called "human factors" portion. "Nature doesn’t kill people with avalanches. People kill people with avalanches."

When I read it last year, I shared it with some experienced friends. Their consensus was similar, and we were grateful for it. It's often difficult to communicate the lengths we go to keep ourselves safe in avalanche terrain to folks unfamiliar, and this article captures the nuance well.

andrewem• 5 years ago

Re-reading this, I again liked this part I recalled from when it came out: “By entering the storefront two hours earlier, by taking an avalanche-safety course, we had statistically increased our chances of being killed in an avalanche. We were more likely to die now than we were at 8 a.m.”

tony_cannistra3• 5 years ago

Totally. The catch-22 of avalanche education.

freetime22• 5 years ago

Reminds me of this xkcd cartoon about lightning strikes: https://xkcd.com/795/

googlerx• 5 years ago

This is really misleading. It's a bit like saying "by putting on parachutes we had statistically increased our chances of being killed in a skydiving accident."

jeffrallen4• 5 years ago

What I find disgraceful about avalanche incidents is the risk that the dead put onto the people charged with coming in to clean up the mess they made. You want to kill yourself? Fine, go jump off a cruise ship in the night. Don't make a helicopter pilot fly in to pick up your stupid corpse.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

There is so much wrong here... but assuming that you are trolling and ignoring you. For anyone else that might be curious:

The danger AFTER an avalanche is near zero. There are very rarely second avalanches in the same place, their whole mechanism for sliding is more or less and all or nothing scenario.

After an avalanche, the snow is extremely dense and compacted this is part of the problem looking for survivors. It’s hard to dig, you aren’t doing it with hands, it’s not fluffy snow, it’s ice the moment it stops moving.

It’s a pain in the ass to look for people in an avi, but it’s not typically some life risking scenario for the people on the correct side of the snow.

jeffrallen4• 5 years ago

Flying helicopters in mountains is risky. Helicopters are dispatched to many avalanche incidents.

I live in Switzerland where we have a ridiculous number of avalanche fatalities, which means our rescuers are exposed to mountain risk when they should be sitting back at base waiting for a call to a road traffic accident, or a pediatric inter-hospital transfer, or something actually worth risking their lives for. Off piste skiers who put others at risk are a disgrace, and if my children do it, I will consider my education of them a failure.

(An avalanche that arrives onto a maintained ski slope is a different story. Skiers and ski area operators have decided to make the effort, collectively, to mitigate the risks in a scalable manner, and that's fine.)

qbasic_forever3• 5 years ago

Avalanches are not like what you think--they're not only on dangerous, steep mountains. Any slope that's about 30-50 degrees and loaded with unstable snow can slide and carry or kill people. There are hills just a few hundred yards away from the visitor center at Mt. Rainier that have slid and killed snowshoers and skiers.

jeffrallen4• 5 years ago

The avalanches that are killing people all over the place this winter in Switzerland are exactly like TFA says: human-triggered.

freetime22• 5 years ago

before instantaneously seizing, when it settles, into a substance resembling cement.

Recently while clearing some snow off of a roof, I was really surprised at how much the density and consistency of snow can change after dropping from a 10 ft roof. From something light and fluffy to something that a buried person could scarcely wiggle a toe in.

qbasic_forever3• 5 years ago

Yes, in my avalanche education class we learned a lot about the experiences of people who were buried. You are totally immobilized in almost any full burial situation. Even worse, you are running through very precious air and generating toxic CO2 with each breath. Statistics show you only have about 20 minutes for someone to find you and dig you out before you're a goner. Snow is nothing to mess with, despite all the fun you can have around it.

qbasic_forever3• 5 years ago

I'm also AIARE 1 certified and use this article to help educate my friends about how to behave after getting vaccinated for, or gaining natural immunity to COVID-19. Do not fall into a false sense of security of invincibility once you gain more knowledge or risk mitigation techniques. Don't be the idiot who got vaccinated and became one of the ~5% that still got infected or spread the disease.

WildGreenLeave• 5 years ago

This is almost completely off topic, but the title name caught my interest because I've been learning about avalanches. If anyone wants to read more about avalanches and their risks I would highly recommend "Staying alive in avalanche Terrain" by Bruce Temper. I don't think it will replace a course but as someone that wants to get into back country skiing it is a great book.

blendo• 5 years ago

Helluva read.

“When testing snow, Ryan said, you should never look for proof of stability. With stability the goal, you’re testing for permission to do what you want to do. Instead, you should test the snow for proof of instability. You should look and look and look until you find it.”

I learned somewhat similar risk analysis as a student pilot. When on your final approach to landing, descending through 500 feet, then 100, then 10, you should always be on a hair trigger, spring-loaded to hit the throttle, abort the landing, and go around. If you’re doing it right, actually making the landing should almost be a surprise!

Then again, my flight instructor said a Piper J-3 Cub is best to learn in, because “it goes just barely fast enough to kill you.”

nataz• 5 years ago

>People kill people with avalanches

That one hits close to home. When I was about 20 yo my friend and I were almost killed in an avalanche.

It was an early spring slab climb, after a hard New England winter. Sunny, blue skies, unseasonably warm. As we hiked up to the mountain we had to traverse multiple debris fields with downed trees and burried approach trails. We finally found a clear area under a route, and started up. We were on our second pitch, first hanging belay when we heard it coming. Thankfully the edge missed us by maybe 20 feet. A tree dragged by the snow almost nailed my partner who was on lead. I got hit with a spattering of snow, and rocks, and ice, giving my helmet a good ring.

It's impossible to fully describe what came down the mountain. It's like standing on the highway shoulder as a tractor trailer whips by, but x100. It's loud, and fast, but also kinda slow because it just keeps coming down the mountain.

We left gear on the wall, and simultaneously repelled down as fast as we could. Made it out without a scratch.

Thing is, we should have never been out there. We were familiar with the risks, but after a long winter, with spring having stopped all the snow/ice sports, we were antsy to get out and climb. We walked through multiple debris fields looking for that "safe" route. We both knew better, but we fed off each other's energy and ended up taking a risk that we shouldn't have.

Yet, that same mentality also pushed us into some of the most spectacular outdoor moments in my life. They mention it in the article, but there is this idea that it's exceeding your limits recklessly is what gets you killed. But Backcountry sports are all about pushing your limits to do something fantastic that is fundamentally unsafe. The risk is inherent to the experience.

I think most serious rock climbers, base jumpers, mountaineering, big wave surfer, wing suit, etc. enthusiasts understand this. Every serious climber I've ever met has personally known someone who has either been terribly injured or killed. You can accept and/or mitigate the risk in these sports, but it's always going to be impossible to transfer.

As I've gotten older, I've made the choice to avoid that risk by leaving behind most of those sports. I'm torn how I'll react if my children decide to pick up these hobbies.

xzel• 5 years ago

As someone who has recently started doing more back country snow sports the partner part of this story really rings true and thanks so much for your story. Finding someone who helps complement yourself via risk and not feeding off each other seems to be a lot more important than I've even considered. Really have a strong and open connection, not being worried about how you look, seems like its almost as important as training, because without it, your training will only go so far.

thoughtstheseus• 5 years ago

Very important. I make it clear every time I bring out someone less experienced that they will help keep us safe because of their skill level. By far the worst thing you can do is have people constantly pushing and piling on risk thinking they’re fine because nothing bad has happened before. Survivorship bias is real.

chronolitus• 5 years ago

To this day, I find this is one of the videos which best captures the mental situation and the race against time that is an avalanche rescue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Gei33I2yE

What I Learned in Avalanche School (2019)

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